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

He said the new commissioner should also commit to firing police officers who “abuse, harass, brutalize, and kill” and promote transparency by releasing more disciplinary records.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 6, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

From The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo

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

Do we want them to leave prison alienated, brutalized, stigmatized and lacking in employable skills?

From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2023

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

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

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

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