Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use thug in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Thug means a person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization. Example: “The guerrillas were a ragtag band of local thugs, former soldiers, displaced farmers, and political idealists.”

Examples of thug by meaning

nounA violent, aggressive, or truculent person.

  • They call you a land of license—free but to thug and thief.1915, Cale Young Rice, “My Country”, in Collected Plays and Poems, page 342
  • Every summer brought the prospect of the dragonships snaking their way upriver, each vessel filled with thirty or more rapacious thugs.1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000...
  • Leah handed me her thug as I walked past her.2021, Anna Durand, Natural Satisfaction

verbTo commit acts of thuggery, to live the life of a thug, to menace, to commit crime.

  • Another story about the young American motor-cycle hoodlum gangs: raping, thugging and robbing their way along the roads.1972, F. Maurice Speed, Film Review, page 219

verb(often with out) To appear as a thug; to dress and act in a manner reminiscent of a thug.

  • I don’t thug out, but I’m not Wall Street, either.2003 April, Dorian Missick, quotee, “Clothesline: Dorian Missick”, in Playboy Magazine, page 44
  • Besides Allen Iverson, basketball players don’t be thugged out enough for me.2006, Katina King, Ride Wit’ Me, page 11
  • Ones that don’t just go on about having a big dick, thugging and bashing on some girl.2017, Todd Dedman, quoting research participant ‘Luke’, Purists and Peripherals: Hip-hop and Grime Subcultures, page 169

More sentences with thug

  • The guerrillas were a ragtag band of local thugs, former soldiers, displaced farmers, and political idealists.From the entry ragtag
  • They were faring in the jungle, when in a stound they fell among a band of thugs.From the entry fall among
  • The thugs kept bashing the cowering victim.From the entry bash
  • The thug pumped two rounds from his heater into her.From the entry heater
  • I got beaten up by thugs on my way home.From the entry beat up
  • My uncle got roughed up by some corporate thugs after they caught him trying to unionize their workers.From the entry unionize
  • I was set upon by a couple of young thugs.From the entry set upon
  • I didn’t choose the thug life. It chose me.From the entry thug life
  • Gangs of thugs roamed the streets.From the entry roam
  • All these local thugs rappers from Toronto would run wozzles for a Drake feature.2024 June 12, u/alvinrampersad39, “Is Drake an Imposter?”, in Reddit, r/Torontology, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2024. From the entry wozzles
  • “You’re a New Yorker, you kinda thug it out,” he said.2020 March 12, Sam Schube, “‘You Kinda Thug It Out’: The Supreme Line in the Age of Coronavirus”, in GQ, archived from the original on 26…. From the entry thug it out
  • How the fug does a thug like you know about any preacher?2013, Dan Ferullo, Monster Hill, →ISBN. From the entry fug
  • Beadles doubted whether the tiny caliber weapon would stop the clavigerous thug .2013, Mike Baron, Skorpio. From the entry clavigerous
  • We need to teach them to become thinkers and artisans, not thugs and baby-mammas.2012, Kevin Alberto Sabio, “From Predators to Protectors”, in Raise Your Brown Black Fist 2!! More Political Shouts of an Angry Afro…. From the entry baby-mamma
  • Made them out to be a bunch of ning-nongs and thugs.2010, Jeanne Matthews, Bones of Contention, page 12. From the entry ning-nong
  • Hong Kong’s Diamond Hill was once home to a mix of gamblers, thugs and movie stars.2010 February 24, Julie Makinen, “A Green and Gold Gem in Hong Kong”, in The New York Times (In Transit section), New York, N.Y.: The New…. From the entry Diamond Hill
  • Didn't want the media getting a hold of it and painting me out as a street thug.2005, Phillip Thomas Duck, Playing with Destiny. From the entry paint out
  • For all of these rappers claiming to live the thug life, there's really no difference.2005, Black Dot, Hip Hop Decoded: From Its Ancient Origin to Its Modern Day Matrix, page 165. From the entry thug life
  • He's just another one of Leo's thugs from the east side.2002, James E. Wollrab, Malfeasance, page 91. From the entry pumping iron
  • What made the Gadiantons serious ideological opponents of republicanism rather than mere thugs were their political ambitions.1989, Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830–1846, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry Gadianton
  • The thug was an acknowledged leg breaker, a shakedown artist, a peddler of violence.1974 September 4, Victor Riesel, “Mob money took Rebozo”, in Rome News-Tribune, US, retrieved 05 Jan 2009, page 4. From the entry leg-breaker
  • At Belton, an armed thug suddenly arose and started toward him.1955, John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, Harper and Brothers Publishers, page 114. From the entry fice
  • Russia’s leader is a conservative, old-school thug.2026 June 14, Simon Tisdall, “Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, and Putin is desperate. But that’s when he’s at his most dangerous”, in…. From the entry client
  • He spoke like a man, looked like a boy and was smooth like a thug, just what Carmen needed.2014, David Rector, Living In Atlanta, page 107. From the entry swaggerlicious
  • To us, they were the sadistic, mean-spirited, right-wing thugs.2009, Sunny Schwartz, Dreams from the Monster Factory. From the entry fluffer
  • Shoulder to shoulder were cocaine cowboys, thousand-dollar-a-night call girls, arms merchants, DEA agents, spies, squint-eyed bankers, and beribboned Panamanian military thugs.2004, Chuck Pfarrer, Warrior Soul: The Memoir Of A Navy Seal, page 118. From the entry cocaine cowboy
  • Me and my thugs clock G's, sippin' naughty thangs.1999 December 21, “Killuminati” (track 11), in Still I Rise, performed by Tupac and Outlawz. From the entry tat
  • We get a quick shot of Battinson taking down a thug using 1 hand, the Batmobile exhaust firing up and a vertical grapple upwards.2020 September, Emmanuel Naicker, “The Biggest Highlights of DC Fandome”, in Alpha Magazine, page 9. From the entry Battinson
  • Actually, that's exactly what O'Dowd is doing in Get Shorty, presenting a taciturn thug with chewed up charm, a chancer pitching a movie in Hollywood.2018 June 6, Peter Crawley, “Get Shorty: Chris O’Dowd as a chewed-up, charming chancer”, in Irish Times, retrieved 29 Aug 2022. From the entry chancer
  • I worked at one bar on the Upper East Side that was owned by a famous Irish badass thug everyone was scared of.2015, Colin Quinn, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, New York, N.Y.: Grand Central Publishing, →ISBN. From the entry badass
  • Where louts shout and thugs mug.2015, Alan Pinkett, Utta Drivel Too, →ISBN, page 59. From the entry dog rough
  • One of the thugs grabs Vulpina's arms and lifts her up from her seat while the other henchman uses a neurolizer to stun Jorrim.2011, J. Edward Parrott, Planet X: The Annunaki Wars, page 168. From the entry neurolizer
  • Other denizens of the nighttime world made the rounds: winos, crackheads, lush rollers, bone thugs, pennyante drug dealers, homeless derelicts, and crazies.2009, William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, Revenge of The Dog Team, →ISBN. From the entry lush roller

Meaning of thug

  1. noun A person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization.
  2. noun A violent, aggressive, or truculent person.
  3. noun A criminal that extorts people.

Full definition of thug

Questions about thug in a sentence

How do you use thug in a sentence?
Thug is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The guerrillas were a ragtag band of local thugs, former soldiers, displaced farmers, and political idealists.”
What is a short sentence with thug?
“Gangs of thugs roamed the streets.”
What does thug mean?
Thug means a person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thug (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use thug in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/thug. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.