plural thugs
1
see usage paragraph below
: a violent or brutish criminal or bully
a brutal thug
a gang of thugs
… in American History X, Norton … plays a vicious young Venice Beach thug, a racist skinhead with … a thick black swastika tattooed over one bulging pec, and a gleam of murder in his eye.—Owen Gleiberman
An authoritarian government willing to use the most brutal means to hold on to power; a dictator whose thugs have murdered, tortured, imprisoned or intimidated tens of thousands of civilians …—Michiko Kakutani
2
: a member of a group of murderous robbers in India's past whose activities were suppressed in the early 19th century
Usage of Thug
Although thug was originally (and often still is) a term with strong negative connotations, since at least the early 1990s it has been embraced and reconceived by rap artists.
[Tupac Shakur's] vision redefined the word "thug" into a man who triumphs over systemic and societal obstacles.
—Mosi Reeves
It now functions in African-American English with far more nuance than those unfamiliar with that reconception will recognize.
"A thug in black people's speech is somebody who is a ruffian but in being a ruffian is displaying a healthy sort of countercultural initiative, displaying a kind of resilience in the face of racism etc. Of course nobody puts it that way, but that's the feeling. And so when black people say it, they don't mean what white people mean …"
—John McWhorter
The word's original and ongoing use to refer to criminals is still very much present in the culture at large, however, and use of thug by a white person to refer to a Black person is generally understood to lack the nuance the word carries when used by a Black person, and to instead be an offensive insinuation that a Black person can be assumed to be engaged in criminal behavior.
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
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