None of us like thugs — rough bullies are just not very nice. But where did the word come from? Try to guess which of the following stories are true.

A. ‘Thug’ was chosen as a word for a nasty bully because of its sound – ‘thug’ is similar to ‘thwack’ and ‘thump’, and suggests the noise of someone being hit hard.

B. The very first ‘Thugs’ were violent robbers in India, who had a horrible habit of stopping travellers and killing them as a sacrifice to the gods. They were famous for their particular method of killing, which was either by strong poison, or by strangling.

C. ‘Thug’ is a shortened version of ‘the mug’, because ‘mug’ is a slang term for the face or head – just where thugs used to strike their unlucky victims.

ANSWER: B!

The very first Thugs were professional robbers and murderers in India (their other name was phansigar, which is Hindi for ‘strangler’). They killed their victims as a sacrifice to Kali, the goddess of destruction. Tales of their crimes spread far and wide, and terrified travellers. In the end, thanks to very tough punishments (some even had their heads chopped off), they were stamped out, but people were still talking about them for many years to come. The Daily News newspaper from 1897 even reported that, ‘When the Prince of Wales was in India, a Thug criminal showed him how victims were strangled’. From these scary beginnings, the word passed into English to describe any violent criminal.

By the way, have you heard of the Sphinx, the terrifying creature from Greek myth with the body of a lion and the head of a woman? It used to stop travellers and ask them a riddle; if they got the answer wrong, it killed them. One of its favourite methods of doing so was (guess what?) by strangling, and its name probably comes from a Greek word meaning ‘the strangler’.

Answers A and C weren’t quite right, although English is packed with words that sound like the thing they describe (like ‘burp’ or ‘hiccup’!). And ‘mug’ really is a slang term for the face, which is where the insult ‘ugly mug’ comes from (though best not use that expression yourselves!).