balky

Maintaining and fixing a balky machine teaches necessary humility.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025

There’s an argument to be made that the feds could believe they have a balky case and want to bloody up Adams in the public eye ahead of a trial.

From Slate ● Sep. 12, 2024

The original May 6 launch was scuttled hours before takeoff due to a balky rocket valve.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2024

Miles said his balky back no longer allows him to shoot, and it’s also kept him away from Seattle U games, which he attended regularly before the pandemic.

From Seattle Times ● May 17, 2024

They were balky, and it took me a few minutes to get them inside and the door shut and latched.

From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Carter may also find the Federal Reserve balkier than before.

From Time Magazine Archive

After dozens of false starts, he wants to get two of his balkier clients to say yes to a house he shows them.

From Time Magazine Archive

I was seated at my typewriter and the book was balkier than usual, and I wished that the clumper at the door would go away.

From Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber

By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2017

Joe made more news as baseball's balkiest holdout.

From Time Magazine Archive

Replace the balkiest portions with gleaming fiber-optic wire.

From Time Magazine Archive

Foreign policy brought Bush his greatest successes, and it is the area in which a President can act more or less on his own, without being greatly hampered by even the balkiest Congress.

From Time Magazine Archive

All those stately equipages were good, and the one that fell to us mounted the hill to our hotel by a grade so insinuating that the balkiest horse in Frascati could hardly have suspected it.

From Roman Holidays, and Others by William Dean Howells