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Definitions for brute force:

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Brute \Brute\, a. [F. brut, nasc., brute, fem., raw, rough, rude, brutish, L. brutus stupid, irrational: cf. It. & Sp. bruto.] 1. Not having sensation; senseless; inanimate; unconscious; without intelligence or volition; as, the brute earth; the brute powers of nature. [1913 Webster] 2. Not possessing reason, irrational; unthinking; as, a brute beast; the brute creation. [1913 Webster] A creature . . . not prone And brute as other creatures, but endued With sanctity of reason. --Milton. [1913 Webster] 3. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of, a brute beast. Hence: Brutal; cruel; fierce; ferocious; savage; pitiless; as, brute violence. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster] The influence of capital and mere brute labor. --Playfair. [1913 Webster] 4. Having the physical powers predominating over the mental; coarse; unpolished; unintelligent. [1913 Webster] A great brute farmer from Liddesdale. --Sir W. Scott. [1913 Webster] 5. Rough; uncivilized; unfeeling. [R.] [1913 Webster] brute force, The application of predominantly physical effort to achieve a goal that could be accomplished with less effort if more carefully considered. Figuratively, repetitive or strenuous application of an obvious or simple tactic, as contrasted with a more clever stratagem achieving the same goal with less effort; -- as, the first prime numbers were discovered by the brute force repetition of the Sieve of Eratosthenes. [PJC]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :
73 Moby Thesaurus words for "brute force": amperage, armipotence, authority, beef, big battalions, black power, charge, charisma, clout, cogence, cogency, compulsion, dint, drive, duress, effect, effectiveness, effectuality, energy, flower power, force, force majeure, forcefulness, full blast, full force, influence, main force, main strength, mana, might, might and main, mightiness, moxie, muscle power, naked force, physical force, pizzazz, poop, potence, potency, potentiality, power, power pack, power structure, power struggle, powerfulness, prepotency, productiveness, productivity, puissance, pull, punch, push, rule of might, sinew, steam, steamroller, strength, strong arm, superiority, superpower, tyranny, ultima ratio, validity, vehemence, vigor, vim, virility, virtue, virulence, vitality, wattage, weight

Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) :
brute force adj. Describes a primitive programming style, one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also brute force and ignorance). The canonical example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the `traveling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical {NP-}hard problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimize the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 -- well, see bignum). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute force. See also {NP-}. A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more `intelligent' algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a ha ha only serious, but the original Unix kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over brittle `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment.

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) :
brute force A primitive programming style in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in a heavy-handed, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also brute force and ignorance). The canonical example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the "travelling salesman problem" (TSP), a classical {NP-hard} problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimise the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 - well, see bignum). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute force. See also {NP-complete}. A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more "intelligent" algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. When applied to cryptography, it is usually known as {brute force attack}. Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a ha ha only serious, but the original Unix kernel's preference for simple, robust and portable algorithms over brittle "smart" ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that operating system. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate aesthetic judgment. [Jargon File] (1995-02-14)

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In cryptography, a brute force attack or exhaustive key search is a strategy that can in theory be used against any encrypted data by an attacker who is unable to ...

Brute force - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brute force may refer to: In mathematics: A problem solving technique where a series of possible answers are worked out and each possibility is tested for accuracy.

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