How to Use hostile in a Sentence

hostile

adjective

• It was a small town that was hostile to outsiders.
• The camel is specially adapted to its hostile desert habitat.
• Her suggestions were given a hostile reception.
• They were entering hostile territory.
• Dugoni, a lawyer who coauthored a nonfiction book about an Idaho worker brain-damaged in 1996 by cyanide fumes, opens his debut novel with a wrongful death attorney in San Francisco, David Sloane, about to make his closing remarks defending a corporation in a similar case. Sloane, who has won 14 cases in a row, hates his arrogant client and must face an obviously hostile jury.
  — Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2006
• Then Paul had a hostile takeover in the fourth quarter.
  — Duane Rankin, The Arizona Republic, 5 May 2022
• The city, still ruled by Jim Crow laws, proved hostile.
  — Teresa Nowakowski, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Nov. 2023
• And, as is often the case, some of those ads have been hostile.
  — Trisha Thadani, SFChronicle.com, 2 Nov. 2020
• Most of the celebrities were deemed hostile to Trump and his policies.
  — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 30 Oct. 2020
• The story of Trump’s rise is often told as a hostile takeover.
  — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 3 May 2020
• Tang isn't the first person in the Phoenix area to be openly hostile to the self-driving fleet.
  — Roberto Baldwin, Car and Driver, 14 Feb. 2020
• If Comcast does make a hostile bid for Fox, there will be irony in it.
  — The Economist, 17 Feb. 2018
• The robots play a more hostile part of the game’s peaceful narrative, and are the force against that.
  — George Yang, Wired, 17 May 2021
• Duke punched back in the second half, but the Cardinals held steady in front of a wild and hostile crowd.
  — Lucas Aulbach, The Courier-Journal, 3 Apr. 2020
• But many of the callers were hostile and confused, Rose said.
  — Washington Post, 4 Jan. 2021
• The two sides — Oscar and the league — haven’t been openly hostile, just … estranged.
  — Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star, 24 June 2018
• That division was shut down in the face of a failed hostile takeover from Broadcom.
  — Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 19 Aug. 2022
• For years, Americans had been hostile to the Paris avant-garde.
  — Hugh Eakin, The Atlantic, 12 July 2022
• There is overwhelming chaos in the universe, and our part in it is hostile.
  — Roberto Brunelli, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Oct. 2023
• To make matters worse, much of the unit artillery is lost during the landing to hostile fire.
  — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 26 Apr. 2018
• Some are hostile, some are flighty, others are just dicks.
  — Joshua Rivera, GQ, 29 Jan. 2018
• All of that sent heavy, hostile messages to North Korea.
  — Alex Ward, Vox, 12 Dec. 2018
• And then people do get angry at them and do get hostile.
  — CBS News, 29 Mar. 2023
• To hostile eyes, any Asian, whether Chinese or not, could be a target.
  — Ligaya Mishan David Chow, New York Times, 19 Sep. 2023
• My manager, the person who hired me, was hostile and rude to me three times in one day.
  — Roxane Gay, New York Times, 28 Aug. 2021
• To be that hostile and petty — to friends, no less, who are feeding them dinner — sounds deeply jerky to me.
  — Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 5 May 2023
• But their art was was made in a time when the world was even more hostile to female artists or female genius.
  — Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 14 May 2021
• Don’t speed and keep a bucket in the car to avoid having to stop at restrooms in hostile locations.
  — Joe Guillen, Detroit Free Press, 27 Sep. 2020
• Renters’ groups tended to be as hostile as anyone else.
  — Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, 21 Apr. 2018
• Iran will remain hostile to Israel and the United States.
  — Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr, Foreign Affairs, 20 Nov. 2023

Last Updated: 1 May 2024