Other forms: thugs
A thug is a violent criminal — someone who hurts people for money or on someone else's orders. Two men standing outside a shop at closing time, the sort hired to make a point without saying much.
It is a strong word and it always disapproves. Politicians reach for it about rioters; football clubs use it about a small group of their own fans. The adjective is thuggish and the behaviour is thuggery. The word also carries real baggage: it came into English out of colonial India, and in American English it has served as a coded insult aimed at young Black men, so it is nothing like as neutral as criminal. In hip-hop it has been partly reclaimed as a badge of toughness, which is a separate use again. Call someone a thug and you are passing judgement, not describing them.
1nounthugA violent person, especially one who attacks or intimidates others.
“A couple of thugs were waiting for him outside the pub.”
2nounhistoricallyHistorically: a member of an Indian gang that robbed and strangled travellers.
“For two centuries thugs preyed on travellers on the roads of northern India.”
thug is a criminal.
Thug is Hindi and Urdu ठग / ٹھگ, 'swindler, cheat', and it reached English through British rule in India. From the seventeenth century a network of gangs known as Thuggee robbed and murdered travellers on the roads, often by strangling them, and by 1810 English was using thug for a member of those gangs. By 1839 it had loosened into 'ruffian, cutthroat, cruel robber' — roughly the meaning it still carries.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)teg- (cover)
pra
𑀞𑀕
English, today
thug
Built from
inc-hnd - ठग / ٹھگ (“swindler, fraud, cheat”), further pra 𑀞𑀕, of unknown origin. See there for more. Thuggee was a network of gangs in India from the 17th century to the 19th century who robbed and murdered travellers, often by strangling. During British Imperial rule of India, many Indian words passed into common English, and by 1810 thug referred to a member of these Indian gangs. The sense was adopted more generally as "ruffian, cutthroat, and cruel robber" by 1839. Perhaps related to English thatch, deck.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 34 of A Man Called Ove.
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