adj. 1
Brutal; cruel; fierce; ferocious; savage; pitiless, without intelligence or reason.
n. 1
A person with the characteristics of an unthinking animal; a coarse or brutal person, particularly one who is dim-witted.
One of them was a hulking brute of a man, heavily tattooed and with a hardened face that practically screamed "I just got out of jail."

Related words

Word family: brutal brutality brutelike brutely brutesome brutify brutish brutism
Phrases: brute for punishment

Forms

Plural: brutes → savages, beasts, animals, creatures…

Choose the right word

Brute, Animal or Beast?

The brute is the animal viewed as dull to all finer feeling; the beast is looked upon as a being of appetites. To call a man a brute is to imply that he is unfeeling and cruel; to call him a beast is to indicate that he is vilely sensual.

J. C. Fernald, English Synonyms and Antonyms (1914)

Example sentences

brutal The city was ruined by the brutal force of nature.
inhuman At least I'm not starting to praise inhuman practices.
brutish He was coarse in his habits and brutish in his ways.
bestial War is a disgusting relic of humanity's bestial past.

Popularity over time

Word	1850 → 2019	Trend
brute		rising
brutal		rising
inhuman		steady
brutish		rising
bestial		rising
ruffian		rising

Use in printed books, per decade from 1850 to 2019.

By length

4 letters: wolf¹
5 letters: beast¹, fauna², fiend¹
6 letters: animal³, brutal², savage²
7 letters: monster², inhuman³, beastly², brutish², bestial², ruffian, wolfish
8 letters: creature², barbaric³, meathead
9 letters: barbarian⁴, ferocious³, barbarous³, truculent³, insensate
10 letters: irrational⁴
11 letters: uncivilized⁴, animalistic, uncivilised

The small number after each word is its number of syllables (fauna² = 2 syllables).