How to Use thug in a Sentence

thug

noun

• He was beaten and robbed by street thugs.
• And then some thug comes along and knocks him over.
  — Adrienne Lafrance, The Atlantic, 22 Jan. 2026
• Some people are thugs for life.
  — Sean Neumann, People.com, 14 Aug. 2025
• The street thugs, the drugs, the knives and the guns, are alien to him.
  — Baz Bamigboye, Deadline, 28 June 2024
• Others seem to act like thugs on a wilding binge.
  — Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Feb. 2026
• The capo wants to know why his thugs are lying dead in the hallway.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 30 Aug. 2023
• But in brushing aside the clerk, the thug put the clerk behind him.
  — David J. Neal, miamiherald, 4 Feb. 2018
• But he was supposed to look like a big thug, like muscle for the mob.
  — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 7 Mar. 2022
• He could have been attacked by the same thugs who robbed and roughed up the man in the road.
  — Vincent Kituku, idahostatesman, 23 Mar. 2018
• But the word thug as a term for rogues and thieves lived on in English.
  — Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2026
• These are good young men who have been portrayed as thugs by virtue of this lawsuit.
  — Christy Gutowski, chicagotribune.com, 16 Mar. 2018
• At two o’clock in the morning, the hooded thugs would come burn a cross on our hill.
  — Roy S. Johnson | [email protected], al, 27 July 2023
• For that thug who speaks pidgin English?
  — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 17 Jan. 2026
• Now, those thugs are convinced Joe knows where the loot is hidden.
  — Time, 30 June 2023
• Yes, some of the thugs were displaying the flag with the swastika on it.
  — Alaska Dispatch News, 16 Aug. 2017
• Hutch screams at thugs during a four-on-one melee, and the irony is only flesh-wound deep.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 14 Aug. 2025
• Your threat to this criminal regime has also kept the regime's thugs at bay.
  — Tucker Reals, CBS News, 9 Jan. 2026
• If that was a scene from a movie, that thug isn’t going to explain himself.
  — vanityfair.com, 27 June 2017
• The truck isn’t fixed, but Walt is confronted by the judge’s thugs.
  — Sandra Dallas, The Denver Post, 7 June 2024
• The band moved out when a street thug used an ax to break down the wall and steal all their instruments.
  — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Oct. 2019
• Again, Maduro is a socialist thug.
  — The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 6 Jan. 2026
• But what bothers me about this is, don't take the side of a thug who kills his opponents.
  — CBS News, 11 Feb. 2024
• In all that time, none of his co-workers figured out that Shaw was a racist thug?
  — Joseph Gerth, The Courier-Journal, 22 Jan. 2018
• Mike was bleeding to death by the side of the road, too, after being stabbed by some thugs.
  — David Segal, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2020
• The thug in the seat next to him had 14 prior arrests and went by the name of killer.
  — NPR, 5 Mar. 2025
• But his end is lots of churches, lots of thugs, lots of killings, lots of madness going on on that side.
  — Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 21 June 2024
• Local thug, Dodger, has been trying to take down the center from the start.
  — Carolyn Twersky, Seventeen, 21 Nov. 2019
• Make no mistake – Maduro and his gang of thugs pose a problem for the entire world.
  — Orlando Sentinel, OrlandoSentinel.com, 9 Jan. 2018
• As night falls, armed thugs roam the streets and families pick up guns to protect themselves.
  — Oren Liebermann, CNN Money, 24 Aug. 2025
• No government masked thugs shooting down our neighbors in the streets.
  — Diego Parrado, Vanity Fair, 29 Mar. 2026