How to Use brutal in a Sentence

brutal

adjective
  • The traffic was brutal on the way to work.
  • The movie is a brutal depiction of the war.
  • I had a brutal headache this morning.
  • The writer describes the dangers of drugs with brutal honesty.
  • Sailors sometimes faced brutal punishments like whipping.
  • The offense was brutal, to say the least, in the red zone.
    — Nate Davis, USA TODAY, 14 Sep. 2022
  • Having said that, the race in the South in Class 4A is brutal.
    — Ben Thomas | [email protected], al, 2 Nov. 2022
  • It's been a brutal season for the 76ers and one that the team would like to forget.
    — David Faris, Newsweek, 27 Feb. 2025
  • My daughters were two and four years old, and the process was brutal.
    — Paige McGlauflin, Fortune, 3 Oct. 2022
  • But the brutal, 10-month siege of Bakhmut spares no one and nothing.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 16 Mar. 2023
  • The heavy dose of it was American, but the U.K. press was brutal as well.
    — Taylor Antrim, Vogue, 25 Sep. 2022
  • At the same time, Iran was locked in a brutal war with its neighbor, Iraq.
    — Joel Mathis, The Week, 4 Aug. 2022
  • Gilmore came of age in a time where comedies did not have to be so brutal.
    — Krystie Lee Yandoli, Rolling Stone, 25 Oct. 2023
  • The game got off to a brutal start for UConn, and continued to get worse.
    — Dom Amore, Hartford Courant, 19 Dec. 2022
  • There’s no getting around the fact that lunges can be brutal.
    — Jeff Tomko, Men's Health, 12 Oct. 2022
  • But her life took a dark turn with a brutal assault at home.
    — Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 3 Apr. 2024
  • In the face of a brutal crackdown by the regime, protests spread like wildfire in the following weeks.
    — Adam Pourahmadi, CNN, 16 Sep. 2023
  • There are many brutal deaths There are countless deaths in the film, and many are quite intense.
    — Kelsie Gibson, Peoplemag, 17 Nov. 2023
  • The Vikings had a brutal defense at that point and that did not change until the 2023 season.
    — Steve Silverman, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2025
  • That our forever work is to learn to hold the brutal and beautiful in the same palm.
    — Ilana Kaplan, People.com, 3 Feb. 2025
  • The smile, like the wigs, helps free him to make art out of even his most brutal experiences.
    — Adam Bradley Adam Bradley Photographs By D’angelo Lovell Williams Styled By Ian Bradley Nick Haramis Photographs By Lise Sarfati Styled By Suzanne Koller Sasha Weiss Photographs By Justin French Susan Dominus Photographs By Luis Alberto Rodriguez Styled By Charlotte Collet, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Playing in the brutal Big East had prepared the Huskies well for this moment.
    — John Marshall, ajc, 4 Apr. 2023
  • The largest movement of peoples across the seas occurred by brutal force, through the Atlantic slave trade.
    — TIME, 18 Mar. 2024
  • This is why Sisi is still in power and why the West turned a blind eye to his brutal post-Arab Spring power grab.
    — Nic Robertson, CNN, 5 Feb. 2025
  • Smith scored again against the Pride despite brutal heat and humidity, and a loss for the Thorns.
    — oregonlive, 15 June 2023
  • Till began a chain of events that led to his kidnapping and brutal killing.
    — Talal Ansari, WSJ, 9 Aug. 2022
  • Justin started out fine until he was stopped on a brutal non-call.
    — Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Nov. 2023
  • Melany was born along the brutal migration route north.
    — Matt Rivers, ABC News, 10 May 2023
  • This all comes as the economy reels from Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners after brutal few days for the stock market.
    — The Hill Staff, The Hill, 5 Apr. 2025
  • Longtime Larson supporters, and there are still many, began to talk among themselves that losing a primary would be a brutal end to their friend’s long career.
    — Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant, 5 Apr. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'brutal.' 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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