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"Hot roasted peanuts! Fresh popcorn! Ice-cold Moxie!" You might have heard such a snack vendor's cry at a baseball game—if you attended it in the early 1900s. In its heyday, some claim that the soft drink named Moxie outsold Coca-Cola. The beverage was a favorite of American writer E. B. White, who wrote, "Moxie contains gentian root, which is the path to the good life. This was known in the second century before Christ and is a boon to me today." In quick time, moxie had become a slang term for nerve and verve, perhaps because some people thought the drink was a tonic that could cure virtually any ill and bring vim back to even the most lethargic individual.

Examples of moxie in a Sentence

He showed a lot of moxie in questioning the policy. it was old-fashioned military moxie that got medical supplies to the disaster site in record time

Recent Examples on the Web Fort Lauderdale, what with all the high-rises screaming up the downtown skyline, already has plenty of moxie. — Phillip Valys, sun-sentinel.com, 11 Jan. 2022 Some of that is coaching the kid up, but some of that is just confidence and moxie. — Josh Newman, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 Jan. 2022 The group is known for their pom-poms, sense of humor and moxie. — Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 24 Nov. 2021 Paloma reveals wit, kicks and moxie after meeting Bond in Cuba. — Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY, 7 Oct. 2021 Kruger has the moxie to play Marie as a standoffish neurotic, Nyong’o creates an unusually emotional hacker, and Cruz, as the one who’s more devoted to her family than to global realpolitik, proves the sweetest of wild cards. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 6 Jan. 2022 But if there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s this — this kid has moxie. — Dj Siddiqi, Forbes, 18 Oct. 2021 All of them get the chance to show their moxie via Sorkin’s patented rat-a-tat, screwball dialogue, and several of them get a righteous speech or two. — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 10 Dec. 2021 As Krystal Stubbs, a middle-class Orlando widow who schemes her way to the top of a multilevel-marketing scam, Dunst dons a decadent southern timbre and enough moxie to power Disney World. — Matthew Jacobs, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2021

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'moxie.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.