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
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
“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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All punishment which is not tempered with forgiveness is brutal; and brutalizes both punisher and punished.
From Practical Ethics by William De Witt Hyde
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
It brutalizes the men and prevents the growth of feminine qualities, coyness among others.
From Primitive Love and Love-Stories by Henry Theophilus Finck
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
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
The central deviation is that this “Speak No Evil,” with its more pronounced humor and catharsis, treats the other film’s scenario as a ghastly comedy of manners rather than as a brutalizing, unheroic descent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2024
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
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
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