variants
also bare-knuckled
or bare-knuckles
as in gladiatorial
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bare-knuckle
Adjective
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These are the kinds of in-your-face, explicit actions that the current climate calls for.—
Kyle Denis,
Billboard,
7 July 2025 -
In the Nineties, McLachlan’s style of emotive pop nestled alongside grunge and West Coast hip-hop on the charts, providing a comforting alternative to far more in-your-face music.—
David Browne,
Rolling Stone,
26 June 2025
Adjective
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Israel and Greece would also try to stymie a pan-Turkic outflow of funds and power thrusting a combative Erdogan into their zones of influence.—
Melik Kaylan,
Forbes.com,
10 July 2025
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Case in point: Seti, the combative heroine at the heart of director Soheil Beiraghi bracing drama, Bidad, has a love of singing and a talent to match.—
Jordan Mintzer,
HollywoodReporter,
9 July 2025
Adjective
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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
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Netanyahu’s pugnacious rhetoric, his growing reliance on the war and on his hard-right allies for his political survival, and the IDF’s conduct on the ground all suggest a preference for fighting on.—
Max Rodenbeck,
Foreign Affairs,
25 June 2025
Adjective
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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
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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
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From the beginning, Bruce is belligerent, taking any opportunity to criticize everyone, often refusing to join meals.—
Oline H. Cogdill,
Sun Sentinel,
2 July 2025
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The pro-Palestine messaging ignores the fact that a nuclear-armed Iran would be far more belligerent and dangerous than the regime already has been for the past three decades.—
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib,
The Atlantic,
26 June 2025
Adjective
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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
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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
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Buhari vowed to do more to fight militant groups and fix the economy as the demonstrations turned deadly and continued to simmer for the remainder of his presidency.—
Mitchell McCluskey,
CNN Money,
13 July 2025
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Settler violence in the West Bank has risen since the start of Israel's war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza in late 2023, according to rights groups.—
Ali Sawafta,
USA Today,
13 July 2025
Adjective
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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
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The bellicose saga between Iran and the United States goes back seven decades and 13 presidents, a relationship that broke down after the people of Iran rose up against a regime the United States helped install 1953.—
Erin Mansfield,
USA Today,
26 June 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Bare-knuckle.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bare-knuckle. Accessed 21 Jul. 2025.
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