mercenary
Example Sentences
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Characterizing the outrage that followed as a strategic error feels a little mercenary.
From Slate ● Aug. 17, 2026
Cash in circulation jumped after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation in September 2022 and during a brief mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group in June 2023.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
In a 2024 exposé on Bowlero’s rise, Amos Barshad introduced a now-familiar category of villain — the private-equity vulture — as more than the average mercenary buying up distressed properties and selling off their parts.
From Salon ● Jul. 3, 2026
Russia's mercenary Wagner Group, which had been fighting with Malian forces against jihadists since 2021, ended its involvement in June 2025.
From Barron's ● Apr. 25, 2026
Anyone, therefore, who wishes to be unable to win should make use of these soldiers, for they are much more dangerous than mercenary troops.
From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli
"We're not mercenaries," he said in a 2021 interview, describing himself as pursuing "a burlesque form of pacifism."
From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026
There’s the coalition warfare, the mercenaries and the overseas adventurism.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
In recent years, a United Nations peacekeeping mission, Rwandan troops and Russian mercenaries from the notorious Wagner group have helped to improve the Central African Republic's security situation.
From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026
Mali imported Russia’s Wagner mercenaries in 2022, in a failed attempt to swiftly suffocate the local Islamist insurgency that has since emerged as al Qaeda’s most successful and resilient offshoot.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
“These boys are no mercenaries, look at them.”
From "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah
Vocabulary lists containing mercenary
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