Definition of brute

The word "brute" originated in Old French, where it was spelled "bruit" and meant simply "noise" or "blare". This sense of the word can still be seen in its modern descendants in some languages, such as the Italian "grido" (meaning "shout" or "cry"), the Dutch "brut" (meaning "loud noise"), and the Serbo-Croatian "bruta" (meaning "noise" or "uproar"). In English, however, the sense of "brute" shifted over time. By the Middle English period (around the 13th century), the word had come to mean not just any loud noise, but a particularly disturbing or unpleasant one. In this context, it was often used to refer to the sound made by an animal, particularly a large or frightening one such as a wild beast. The association of "brute" with large, dangerous animals continued into the Early Modern English period (around the 16th century), when the word began to be used more broadly to refer to any human being who was considered to be animalistic, uncivilized, or lacking in intellect or culture. By the 17th century, "brute" had evolved into a more fully-fledged pejorative term, used to describe everything from uncouth commoners to savage peoples overseas. Interestingly, the sense of "brute" as a term for a large, dangerous animal would later be reversed, with the Greek word "therion" (meaning "beast") becoming more commonly used for that purpose in Modern English. Nowadays, "brute" is mostly used in its newer, more abstract sense of a person who is brutish or brutally uncivilized, rather than to describe specific animals or loud noises.