velvet glove

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.

“That velvet glove can come off, and the people know it can come off,” but mostly, you want them to comply because it feels like “just what has to be.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 28, 2025

“We’ve got to a point where we can no longer be able to afford the velvet glove diplomacy.”

From Seattle Times • Sep. 16, 2023

Still, within the velvet glove remains an iron fist.

From New York Times • Jan. 13, 2022

A Republican colleague, Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., once told the Herald that Ms. Meek had “a velvet glove, but sometimes she can have a fist in it. She’s so likable that it’s sometimes disarming.”

From Washington Post • Nov. 29, 2021

It would seem that the Croats will remain in more or less active opposition so long as Pribičević, the arch-centralizer who scorns to wear the velvet glove, stays in the Government.

From The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 by Baerlein, Henry