It's the Word of the Day podcast for October 30th.

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dot U.K. slash Wondery. Today's audible.co.com.ukes-wondery. Today's word is truculent, spelled T-R-U-C-U-L-E-N-T. Truculent is an adjective.

It describes a person who is easily annoyed and eager to argue or fight. It can also describe the mood or attitude of such a person.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Variety by Jessica Kien.

It's the holidays and strings of gaudy rainbow lights twinkle from gables.

In cozy living rooms, the elders doze in their chairs while middle-aged siblings

bicker and booze it up around the dining table. Little kids squirm in makeshift beds, trying

to stay awake for Santa, while truculent teenagers sneak out into the suburban night to do

secret teenager things.

English speakers adopted the word truculent from Latin in the mid-16th century,

trimming the word truculentus, a form of the Latin adjective trukes, meaning savage,

and keeping the words meaning, apparently in need of a new way to describe what is cruel and fierce,

they applied the word 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. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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