BRUTE
What does "BRUTE" mean?
A savagely violent person or animal; also raw, unreasoning physical force.
Meanings
- A brutal, cruel, or insensitive person. Only a brute would treat a horse like that.
- An animal as opposed to a human being. He spoke of caring for the dumb brutes in his charge. archaic
- Merely physical, unreasoning, or instinctive; relying on force rather than thought. They moved the boulder by brute strength alone.
Did you know?
- The hacking term 'brute-force attack' borrows this exact word: it means cracking a password by trying every possible combination - winning by sheer relentless force rather than any cleverness, just like the original Latin 'brutus' meant 'dull and unreasoning'.
Word origin
From Latin 'brutus' (heavy, dull, stupid, irrational), via Old French 'brut'; it first meant 'belonging to animals as distinct from reasoning humans'.
Remember it
BRUTE = BR + UTE; picture a big 'ute' (truck) shoving forward on pure muscle, no finesse.
A little poem
The brute breaks doors that the key would have turned;
force is the lesson the patient never learned.
couplet
Wordplay
- The locksmith and the burglar both got in - one used a key, the other was just a brute about it.
What it teaches
Brute force opens fewer doors than patience; the strongest arm still loses to the right key.
Quick facts
What does BRUTE mean?
A savagely violent person or animal; also raw, unreasoning physical force.
Is BRUTE a valid word?
Yes — BRUTE is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is BRUTE?
BRUTE has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does BRUTE come from?
From Latin 'brutus' (heavy, dull, stupid, irrational), via Old French 'brut'; it first meant 'belonging to animals as distinct from reasoning humans'.
What can BRUTE teach us?
Brute force opens fewer doors than patience; the strongest arm still loses to the right key.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.