thug

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
thug/θʌɡ/

▶noun

• 1 a violent and aggressive man, especially a criminal.

• 2 (Thug) historical a member of an organization of robbers and assassins in India, suppressed by the British in the 1830s.

– derivatives
thuggery noun.

word history: Thug comes from the Hindi word ṭhag ‘swindler, thief’, and beyond that goes back to ancient Sanskrit. The original Thugs were an organization of robbers and assassins in India, followers of the goddess Kali, who waylaid and strangled their victims in a ritually prescribed manner. The modern sense, denoting any violent man, was first recorded in 1839.