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Thuggish describes someone, or the way someone acts, as being like a thug: rough, threatening, ready to use force. It is an adjective, and it is a judgement — never a compliment. Notice what the -ish ending is doing. It does not say the person IS a thug; it says he is thug-LIKE. So 'thuggish behaviour' can be used about a person who has never actually hit anyone but who stands too close, speaks too loudly, and makes people afraid. That is why it is a useful word: it lets a writer describe the feeling of menace without accusing anyone of a crime. It goes with behaviour, tactics, manner, appearance — 'thuggish tactics', 'a thuggish-looking man in the doorway'. Because it comes from thug, carry the same caution over: in American English, describing a young Black man as 'thuggish' will be heard by many people as racist coding, whatever you intended.
流氓似的、粗暴兇狠的（形容詞）。注意 -ish 是「像…一樣」，指那種嚇人的樣子和作風，不一定真的動手。
組成thug + -ish. The -ish ending (from Middle English -ish, Old English -isċ, back through Proto-Germanic *-iskaz to Proto-Indo-European *-iskos) means 'like, having the qualities of' — so thuggish means 'thug-like'.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
thuggishadj/ˈθʌɡɪʃ/
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derogatoryCharacterized by thuggery; behaving in a violent or intimidating way; appearing to be violent or intimidating.
- Their thuggish manner made continuing negotiations very difficult.
- We were Jews—and not only were we not inferior to the goyim who beat us at football, but the chances were that because we could not commit our hearts to victory in such a thuggish game, we were superior!
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obsoleteResembling or characteristic of the assassins known as thugs or thuggees (often capitalized in this sense).
- […] beside the deceitfulness of the heart and the carnality common to all men, the deep ignorance of the heathen, the abjectness of their social condition, their vain but venerated traditions, their time-honored customs of profligacy, impelling to infanticide, parricide, Thuggish murders, and cannibalism—all conflict steadily with the holiest efforts to transform them into symmetrical Christians.
- Occasionally you might have beheld us chasing up scores of Dorkings,—which had been our admiration for the twelvemonth, and massacreing them remorselessly for the public good: our turkeys and geese, too, were in continual jeopardy of their lives. But,—these Thuggish propensities notwithstanding, we took a paternal interest in our feathered family.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。