How to Use barbed in a Sentence

barbed

adjective
  • The candidates exchanged barbed comments during the debate.
  • The flea’s barbed tail gets caught in the throats of fish, so fish spit them out.
    — Tim Folger, Environment, 2 Dec. 2020
  • The men jumped the barbed wire fence, calling Cameron's name.
    — Rory Linnane, Journal Sentinel, 9 Jan. 2024
  • Once the poop is in the water, no amount of barbed wire can get it out.
    — Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 16 Aug. 2024
  • There’s a gate topped with barbed wire to keep the riffraff out, and then long and winding stairs down to the sea.
    — Stephen Rodrick, Variety, 13 Sep. 2023
  • In the cartoon, Dr. Li was wearing a mask of barbed wires.
    — New York Times, 15 Jan. 2021
  • Insert one end of the barbed union all the way into the open end of the hose, and secure the hose over the union with the clamp.
    — Will Sutherland, Popular Mechanics, 14 July 2021
  • And losing a ball ... over the barbed wire fence ... over the highway ... into the trees.
    — Regions Tradition, AL.com, 21 May 2017
  • The Porches trawled up the outside of the cemetery, which was lined with ivy and barbed wire.
    — Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 12 Feb. 2024
  • The White men had crushed his skull and tied a cotton-gin fan to his neck with barbed wire.
    — Deneen L. Brown, Washington Post, 28 Apr. 2023
  • On the other side of their garden wall, beyond the barbed wire, is the death camp Auschwitz.
    — Hazlitt, 6 Mar. 2024
  • The Taser can fire two barbed darts that are connected to thin wires.
    — Matt McKinney, Star Tribune, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Almost 4 feet tall and nearly 8 feet wide, the plane is wrapped in a strict grid of barbed wire.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2024
  • At night my mother would look through the barbed wire fence to get a glimpse of my father.
    — Linda Chase, Sun Sentinel, 5 Aug. 2024
  • Where’s that man who’d throw blankets over my barbed wire?
    — Erin Browne, Vulture, 19 Apr. 2024
  • Left behind among the piles of trash are clotheslines made from barbed wire.
    — Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times, 8 Apr. 2024
  • Others have hopped fences or cut the barbed wire to access the monolith.
    — Tiney Ricciardi, The Denver Post, 1 July 2024
  • The video has since been revised, and the image replaced with an image of barbed wire.
    — Emily St. Martin, Los Angeles Times, 7 Apr. 2023
  • The video has since been revised, and the image replaced with an image of barbed wire.
    — oregonlive, 9 Apr. 2023
  • This is a problem that is not going to be solved by putting guards on the border or barbed wire.
    — Albinson Linares, NBC News, 3 Apr. 2024
  • When shotgun season opens, whole teams of hunters fan out in a line and plow through the barbed brush to get the deer up and running.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Dec. 2020
  • Brooks has to retrieve cows that slip through the barbed wire fence around the site and chew the wells’ rusting metal and drink wastewater.
    — Mark Olalde, ProPublica, 6 May 2024
  • Trump has cracked down on that front, while employing barbed rhetoric.
    — Tom Benning, Dallas News, 24 Aug. 2020
  • His skull was crushed, one was eye dislodged and a cotton-gin fan was tied around his neck with barbed wire.
    — Deneen L. Brown, Washington Post, 23 July 2023
  • In El Sereno, where crime has been increasing, barbed-wire fences line the street-level train tracks.
    — Rachel Uranga, oregonlive, 17 Jan. 2022
  • In El Sereno, where crime has been increasing, barbed-wire fences line the street-level train tracks.
    — Rachel Uranga, oregonlive, 17 Jan. 2022
  • In El Sereno, where crime has been increasing, barbed-wire fences line the street-level train tracks.
    — Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2022
  • In El Sereno, where crime has been increasing, barbed-wire fences line the street-level train tracks.
    — Rachel Uranga, oregonlive, 17 Jan. 2022
  • An enemy then grabs the barbed wire with his bare hands — which already sounds like a bad idea, btw — only for the wire to shock him backward.
    — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 20 Mar. 2025
  • Additionally, the walls were covered in barbed wire, and the balcony had a large privacy wall.
    — Olivia B. Waxman, TIME, 7 Mar. 2025

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

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