ironhanded

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for ironhanded
Adjective
  • Its pace is slow — occasionally, but rarely, to its detriment — but this clearly deliberate tempo gives you the chance to shoulder the burdens of its oppressive atmosphere and settle into its many puzzles, which regularly trade logic for personal interpretation, and occasionally just vibes.
    Matt Gardner, Forbes.com, 10 Sep. 2025
  • This process includes questioning the logics and myths that uphold the status quo and calling out oppression as part of the struggle toward an anti-oppressive future.
    The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Responding firefighters discovered Maureen in the living room with severe burns, a fractured larynx and soot in her airway, the DA's office said.
    Bonny Chu, FOXNews.com, 13 Sep. 2025
  • Stroud isn’t blameless in the Texans’ severe pass-protection issues dating to last year.
    Tom Krasovic, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • The backcourt duo of Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman, also known as the StudBudz, are shifty, tough shot-making guards who can get hot in a hurry.
    Nathan Canilao, Mercury News, 13 Sep. 2025
  • And that’s tough on those guys.
    Bill Plunkett, Oc Register, 13 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • The trappings of the Senate were another world from Mr. Abourezk’s rough-and-tumble childhood on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, where his Lebanese parents had immigrated and ran a general store.
    STEPHEN GROVES, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Feb. 2023
  • The startup’s rough-and-tumble experiments are even more telling.
    Justine Calma, The Verge, 24 Feb. 2023
Adjective
  • But going back to trying to be gentle in ungentle times.
    Stephanie Stradley, Houston Chronicle, 25 Sep. 2020
  • Notes From an Apocalypse is a gentle argument for coming to terms with the precarity of life, published in a moment where people are facing its fragility in an immediate and ungentle context.
    Kate Knibbs, Wired, 16 Apr. 2020
Adjective
  • In fact, Baltimore has received a stern warning on closing out big games from former All-Pro cornerback Patrick Peterson.
    James Brizuela, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Shatter and Falconi had formed Flipper in the late 1970s Bay Area at the dawn of hardcore, the tougher and sterner punk variant that had a stronghold in California.
    Jazz Monroe, Pitchfork, 7 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • But in recent years, acts of brazen violence have been the grim drumbeat of a debased national politics.
    Eric Cortellessa, Time, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Despite that progress, pancreatic cancer holds the grim record for having a survival rate of only 13% across five years – the lowest of all.
    Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Such subtlety may not necessarily be what readers—perhaps American readers, in particular—expect from political fiction, which can have a reputation for being didactic and heavy-handed, designed to beat readers over the head, as if anything political were made in the mode of Soviet realism.
    Lily Meyer, The Atlantic, 5 Sep. 2025
  • Trump's public approval rating on immigration fell to 43% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll in August from a high of 50% in March as Americans took an increasingly dim view of his heavy-handed tactics against migrants.
    Ted Hesson, USA Today, 2 Sep. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Ironhanded.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ironhanded. Accessed 16 Sep. 2025.

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