bare-knuckle

variants also bare-knuckled or bare-knuckles

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for bare-knuckle
Adjective
  • The in-your-face approach also may help unify Democrats, some of whom want to see party leaders adopt a more aggressive, confrontational stance with Trump and Republicans.
    Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News, 16 July 2025
  • At its core, Wimbledon is a British brand built on restraint: the all-white dress code, the absence of in-your-face, on-court branding, the strawberries and cream.
    Jeetendr Sehdev, Forbes.com, 13 July 2025
Adjective
  • Installed throughout Wembley Park–including along Olympic Way and outside Wembley Stadium–the exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the early relationship between the famously combative siblings who powered Oasis to global stardom.
    Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 29 July 2025
  • Jorge became combative and tried to get police to leave the apartment, but she was taken into custody.
    Colin Mixson, New York Daily News, 25 July 2025
Adjective
  • Some Democrats may thrill each time Newsom delivers one of his pugnacious pronouncements.
    Mark Barabak, Mercury News, 19 July 2025
  • Keefe was an Irish Republican from Boston, the son of a meat cutter, who made his name in New Haven as a pugnacious defender of the oppressed from their oppressors.
    Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, 11 July 2025
Adjective
  • But Groff’s take-no-prisoners performance as nightclub superstar Bobby Darin is pure Broadway, and thoroughly – and more than justifiably – winning.
    Greg Evans, Deadline, 6 June 2025
  • Harrison confidently adopts the take-no-prisoners physicality that makes Zephyr a worthy foe for Tucker, but her line readings are bland, doing nothing to enliven the basic script by Nick Lepard.
    Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire, 17 May 2025
Adjective
  • Everyone seemed white, and every man other than the fathers and the very old seemed belligerent.
    Michael Thomas, New Yorker, 19 July 2025
  • Another man told the belligerent passenger not to speak disrespectfully to women.
    Thomas Westerholm, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 July 2025
Adjective
  • Though Hunt Wynorski’s (Nick Zano) actual death happens off-screen, his pained panic at being trapped underwater by the suction pull of a public pool’s drain is an agonizing sequence, culminating in the gnarly visual of a blood-and-guts fountain.
    Gayle Sequeira, Vulture, 16 May 2025
  • This is a blood-and-guts medical-show model, in which everything teeters on the brink of catastrophe at all times and the doctors are adrenaline junkies approximately one shift away from a complete mental breakdown.
    Kathryn VanArendonk, Vulture, 3 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group's soldiers launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
    Lily Kepner, Austin American Statesman, 30 July 2025
  • Trump has been uniquely willing to break with Israel on many issues—for instance, by making deals with the Houthi militant group in Yemen and opening a diplomatic dialogue with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, despite his past alignment with al-Qaeda.
    ZAHA HASSAN, Foreign Affairs, 29 July 2025
Adjective
  • The Fed’s debates about monetary policy come against a bellicose political backdrop, in which the central bank’s traditional independence is eroding.
    Paolo Confino, Fortune, 18 July 2025
  • In 2017, the President returned from an impressively bellicose Bastille Day celebration in France determined to host his own version of a military parade.
    Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker, 12 June 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Bare-knuckle.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bare-knuckle. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.

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