Word.ws English Dictionary

thugs

thugs is the plural of thug.

Meaning of thug

Noun

thug (plural thugs)

  1. A person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization.
  2. A 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
  3. A criminal that extorts people.
  4. A person who use intimidation to coerce others.
  5. (historical) One of a band of assassins formerly active in northern India who worshipped Kali and sacrificed their victims to her.
    Synonyms:
    phansigar
  6. (African-American Vernacular) One who, usually as a result of social disadvantage, has turned to committing crimes (e.g. selling drugs, robbery, assault, etc.) to make a living; a gangsta.

See all 10 meanings of thug

Phrases with thugs

Questions about thugs

What is thugs the plural of?
Thugs is the plural of thug.

Words near thugs in the dictionary

  1. thuglets
  2. thuglike
  3. thugness
  4. thugocracies
  5. thugocracy
  6. thugs
  7. thugs it out
  8. thugsta
  9. thugstas
  10. thugz
  11. Thuir

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thugs (page history and authors); thug (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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Cite this entry: “thugs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thugs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.