[f. L. ferōci-, ferox fierce, ferocious + -OUS.]
1. Of animals or persons, their dispositions or actions: Fierce, savage; savagely cruel or destructive.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., III. xvi. 144. The Lyon a fierce and ferocious Animall hath young ones but seldome, and also but one at a time.
1791. Boswell, Johnson (1816), III. 87. He was by no means of that ferocious and irascible character which has been ignorantly imagined.
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. 188. The most powerful and ferocious beasts are alarmed by it [fire], and fly from it.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, xxiii. To escape the necessity of saluting one whom they had been taught to consider as a ferocious as well as unprincipled libertine.
a. 1853. Robertson, Lect. ii. (1858), 76. I cannot see anything manly in that ferocious struggle.
1886. Sheldon, trans. Flaubert’s Salammbô, 1. The park also environed a court for elephants, pits for ferocious animals, and a prison for slaves.
Comb.
1849. G. P. R. James, The Woodman, ii. Is he a ferocious-looking man?
2. Indicating or characterized by ferocity.
1728. Pope, The Dunciad, II. 328.
| Slow rose a form in majesty of mud; | |
| Shaking the horrors of his sable brows, | |
| And each ferocious feature grim with ooze. |
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xlvii. (1828), IV. 418. Their prominent or ferocious eyes.
Hence Ferociously adv. Ferociousness.
1766. Fordyce, Serm. Yng. Wom. (1767), II. xiii. 223. Roughness, and even ferociousness, in a man, we often overlook, and are sometimes diverted with. In a woman, we are always hurt by them.
1775. Mrs. Harris, in Priv. Lett. Ld. Malmesbury, I. 303. He [Dr. Johnson] feeds nastily and ferociously, and eats quantities most unthankfully.
1818. Hallam, Mid. Ages (1872), I. 52. The respect which was felt … mitigated in all the rancour and ferociousness of hostility.
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., I. xxix. 394. The rats could not or would not forego the horny skin about her paws; and they gnawed her feet and nails so ferociously that we drew her up yelping and vanquished.
1867. Miss Braddon, Aur. Floyd, i. 10. They hate me so ferociously.
