What truculent means and why it is not spelled truckulent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 19, 2025 Pearls Before Swine comic by Stephan Pastis has the following dialogue:

 

Rat: You’re being truculent today.

Goat: What does ‘truculent’ mean?

Rat: Quick to argue.

Goat: I’m not like that.

Rat: And there you go being truculent.

Goat: I hate when he gets a new word-of-the-day calendar.

Rat: You can never argue about being truculent without being truculent.

 

And why isn’t it spelled with a ‘k’ as truckulent?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary explains:

 

“English speakers adopted truculent from Latin in the mid-16th century, trimming truculentus, a form of the Latin adjective trux, meaning ‘savage,’ and keeping the word’s meaning. Apparently in need of a new way to describe what is cruel and fierce, they applied truculent both to brutal things (wars, for example) and people (such as tyrants). Eventually even a plague could be truculent. In current use, though, the word has lost much of its etymological fierceness. It now typically describes the sort of person who is easily annoyed and eager to argue, or language that is notably harsh.”

 

A cartoon with a boy and a toy truck was adapted from OpenClipArt.