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red in tooth and claw

red in tooth and claw adjective: characterized by uncaring, amoral ruthlessness or brutality, especially of a kind seen as reflecting the way of things in nature.

Adjective

red in tooth and claw (not comparable)

  1. Characterized by uncaring, amoral ruthlessness or brutality, especially of a kind seen as reflecting the way of things in nature.
    • We love nature, but nature doesn't love us. One night in the Amazon rainforest will show us that nature is red in tooth and claw.
    • And he, shall he,
      Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair, […]
      Who trusted God was love indeed
      And love Creation’s final law—
      Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
      With ravine, shriek’d against his creed— […]
      Be blown about the desert dust,
      Or seal’d within the iron hills?1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto LVI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC

Origin of red in tooth and claw

From Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam A.H.H.

Questions about red in tooth and claw

What does red in tooth and claw mean?
Red in tooth and claw means characterized by uncaring, amoral ruthlessness or brutality, especially of a kind seen as reflecting the way of things in nature.
What part of speech is red in tooth and claw?
Red in tooth and claw is an adjective.

Words near red in tooth and claw in the dictionary

  1. red huckleberry
  2. red hydrogen
  3. red imported fire ant
  4. red imported fire ants
  5. red in the face
  6. red in tooth and claw
  7. Red Indian
  8. Red Indians
  9. red ink
  10. red ironwood
  11. red ironwoods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: red in tooth and claw (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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