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
Let us hope that Taliban leaders mean it when they say they will not brutalize the population as they did before.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 17, 2021
“It will consume government. It will brutalize people. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars,” he said.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 10, 2021
“I didn’t brutalize anybody!” he feels the need to tell the people who see him.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 7, 2021
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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It is not the Creator who so brutalizes lives and emotions.
From Highland Ballad by Christopher Leadem
That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against odds.
From The Quality of Mercy by William Dean Howells
You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling necessarily.
From The Arena Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 by B. O. (Benjamin Orange) Flower
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
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
Mr. Trump complained about the charges against him and then about his own lawyers, whom he verbally brutalized privately throughout the trial.
From New York Times ● May 31, 2024
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
In the kitchen, she hacked at a chunk of ham with a knife and brutalized an onion.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
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Dahlia Lithwick: These were incredibly consequential gut punches, two more in a long sequence of brutalizing cases.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
While Roger Federer is depicted as James Bond, in a tux, elegant and wrinkle-free, Nadal is called Rambo, ripped and relentless, brutalizing the ball and opponents alike.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 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
Levinson is perhaps not enough of a formalist to fully convey, assuming any film could, the combined visceral and mental toll professional boxing must have taken on a man haunted by brutalizing his comrades.
From New York Times ● Apr. 27, 2022
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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