ferocious

adjective

1. 1

   Marked by extreme and violent energy.

   But it seemed to me that there were few faces like his, with the ferocious profile that brought to mind the Latin word rapax or one of Rouault's crazed death-dealing arbitrary kings.

   Scotland needed a victory by eight points to have a realistic chance of progressing to the knock-out stages, and for long periods of a ferocious contest looked as if they might pull it off.

   "My memory of him in the office at Peterborough was the ferocious nature of his typing, on a manual machine of course. This was long before the days of desktop publishing, and you could hear him down the corridor absolutely hammering the keyboard."

   So Ukraine is on the ropes. Using that boxing metaphor, one immediately thinks of the new world heavyweight champion, the Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk, who was seemingly down and out under the ferocious assault of the giant Tyson Fury, but then came back to win on points at the end of a brutal 12 rounds.

2. 2

   Extreme or intense.

Forms

comparative

more ferocious

superlative

most ferocious