brutalize

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

Specifically, a few decades of drought pushed the Huns to the brink, forcing them to brutalize others in pursuit of survival.

From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2022

They built a fledgling democracy with elected leaders who often failed but didn’t brutalize their people as so many regimes in the region do.

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

The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders.

From "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman

Any overacting brutalizes Cheever's prose; mugging is the artistic equivalent of a mugging.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

It brutalizes the men and prevents the growth of feminine qualities, coyness among others.

From Primitive Love and Love-Stories by Henry Theophilus Finck

A sophist is a forger, and this forger sometimes brutalizes good sense.

From The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo

It unfailingly changes the expression; frequently, it degrades and brutalizes the face.

From The Winning Clue by James Hay

That the ’70s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda’s sophistry isn’t surprising.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026

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

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

Dahlia Lithwick: These were incredibly consequential gut punches, two more in a long sequence of brutalizing cases.

From Slate ● Jun. 25, 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

Not, how do we ensure that the police are not brutalizing the Black community?

From Salon ● Jul. 12, 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