brutalize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Whether or not he decides to appear at the trial, scheduled to begin later this year, the A.G. can use his videoed deposition testimony to brutalize him the same way Carroll’s lawyers did.
From Slate ● May 11, 2023
“A White House job is not a promise of an unlimited prerogative to brutalize someone who was a victim of a prior attack,” attorney Joshua Matz said.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2021
“It will consume government. It will brutalize people. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars,” he said.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 10, 2021
“Oliver Twist” exposes, on every page, the hypocrisy of those who brutalize vulnerable children and claim to be virtuous in the process.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2018
The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders.
From "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
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Any overacting brutalizes Cheever's prose; mugging is the artistic equivalent of a mugging.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Frugality, in fact, softens character, in animals as in men; gross feeding brutalizes it.
From The Wonders of Instinct Chapters in the Psychology of Insects by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
And cold, cold day and night, cold that brutalizes, that degenerates you till you would sell your soul, your mother's soul to be warm again.
From Home Fires in France by Dorothy Canfield
Now, then, you will understand what I meant by saying that our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower.
From Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold by William Savage Johnson
It unfailingly changes the expression; frequently, it degrades and brutalizes the face.
From The Winning Clue by James Hay
This is not the first time I have encountered a situation where the hapless staff find themselves brutalized by loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2025
This is about as much of a review of “All’s Fair” worth venturing at this point, since pretty much every critic has brutalized the show.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
In Los Angeles, the sun was rising over neighborhoods brutalized by flames.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2025
When, in the mid-20th century, President Dwight Eisenhower’s “mighty network of highways” spread its tentacles across the landscape, it brutalized nature.
From Slate ● May 25, 2024
“Please, Gus. Not another word. Even my brutalized spirit has some sensitivity left. I can’t let you slander my girls like that.”
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients of temporary protected status, or TPS.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
In an interview with the New York Times, he said he hopes the Revolutionary Guard will simply “surrender” to the opposition forces it was brutalizing only a month ago.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 2, 2026
Los Angeles built off the momentum, brutalizing Arizona with eight straight designed runs to start off a 75-yard touchdown drive to open the third quarter.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 16, 2023
In Philipps’s meticulously assembled and brilliantly written account, he is not a warrior driven mad by the stress of combat, a good guy gone rogue or a victim of a brutalizing culture.
From New York Times ● Sep. 3, 2021
Three thousand children crowded into this ugly brutalizing school that had facilities for only one thousand.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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