How to Use beat back in a Sentence

beat back

phrasal verb
Definition of beat backnext
  • To beat back the Russians and their mastermind Vladimir Putin.
    — Greg Palkot, Fox News, 18 June 2023
  • But Democrats say the move is more about beating back the far right than saving Johnson.
    — Caitlin Yilek, CBS News, 7 May 2024
  • At times the role of Native Americans in the industry has been used to beat back the 36% cap.
    — Joel Jacobs, ProPublica, 23 Dec. 2024
  • The drugs have beaten back all but one tumor in Monje’s lung.
    — Yuki Noguchi, NPR, 18 Sep. 2024
  • Aeropress New Atlas founder Mike Hanlon was all over the coffee beat back in the mid-2000's.
    — New Atlas, 2 Oct. 2024
  • From Kyiv to Kharkiv, its troops were being beaten back by Ukrainian forces.
    — James Verini Paolo Pellegrin, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2023
  • The full House last week beat back a Democratic effort to make the report public.
    — Axios, 10 Dec. 2024
  • Porter narrowly beat back a challenge by Baugh in 2022.
    — Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 6 Nov. 2024
  • The rules promise to beat back the deluge of fake reviews on e-commerce sites and social media.
    — Michael Kan, PCMAG, 22 Oct. 2024
  • But in the following months, Bragg beat back legal challenges.
    — Michael Rothfeld Emily Woo Zeller Krish Seenivasan David Mason, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2024
  • Most of the time, Black on Black crime is invoked not in a sincere way, but rather it's used as a cudgel with which to beat back talk about police violence.
    — Dana Taylor, USA TODAY, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Biden has been beating back calls to step away from the ticket as the Democrats’ August national convention nears.
    — Julia Mueller, The Hill, 9 July 2024
  • In the fields As soon as Russian troops were beaten back from the lands surrounding Kyiv in March 2022, the region’s farmers came rushing back to try to salvage their crops.
    — Victoria Beaule, ABC News, 4 Oct. 2023
  • The contentious deal took two years to complete, and the companies were forced to sell most of Shaw’s wireless business for less than C$3 billion to beat back an antitrust case.
    — Derek Decloet, Bloomberg.com, 26 Apr. 2023
  • And if so, how dissimilar is that impulse from the hope that my writing can beat back a fate of inconsequence for me.
    — Mitchell S. Jackson, New York Times, 20 Dec. 2023
  • At nightfall, local officials put out an urgent call for volunteers to head out the next morning to beat back the fire.
    — Melissa Gomez, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2024
  • In the days since the deal was agreed upon, Democrats have been touting it as a home run for their priorities that beat back GOP efforts to exact spending cuts.
    — Allison Pecorin, ABC News, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Time after time, this damn disease was beaten back to hell by a man who had no give-up in him, a man who should be a Hall of Famer, a man who did so much for three of the game’s franchises.
    — Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Chun responded with a violent crackdown, sending in the military to beat back the protest.
    — Chandelis Duster, NPR, 5 Dec. 2024
  • What Lula Can Do Lula has a track record of beating back pro-deforestation forces.
    — Matias Spektor, Foreign Affairs, 7 Nov. 2022
  • Amazon has beat back unionization efforts in places like the Albany area and Alabama.
    — Jon Chesto, BostonGlobe.com, 25 June 2023
  • Troops deployed by Donald Trump’s orders beat back a crowd gathered in the square to protest police brutality.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2025
  • Governors for six decades have tried to build this project in some form or another and been beaten back by grassroots activists or state voters.
    — George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • The bills are intended to beat back a deadly substance that has infiltrated much of the illicit drug supply in the United States.
    — Jan Hoffman, New York Times, 21 June 2023
  • Few believed Ukraine could ever beat back its attacker.
    — Gideon Rose, Foreign Affairs, 13 June 2023
  • Johnson's allies pleaded with the speaker in April to change the rules to beat back Greene's effort and any other possible future removal threats.
    — Ken Tran, USA TODAY, 1 May 2024
  • The man on the sidewalk appears to struggle to sit up, only to be beaten back down, according to the video, which was reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
    — oregonlive, 29 June 2023
  • But as the winds driving the inferno have slackened, experts are cautiously optimistic that the blazes can soon be beaten back.
    — Alec Luhn, WIRED, 10 Jan. 2025
  • America’s startups deserve much of the credit for beating back Covid-19.
    — Jennifer C. Cheng, The Mercury News, 24 Jan. 2024
  • But Raziq beat back the suicide bombers and brought stability to Kandahar.
    — Matthieu Aikins Victor J. Blue Peter Ganim Krish Seenivasan Steven Szczesniak, New York Times, 22 May 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'beat back.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: