MUSCLES Synonyms: 56 Similar and Opposite Words

muscles

verb

present tense third-person singular of muscle

as in forces

to cause (a person) to give in to pressure he was muscled out of command by his opponents at military headquarters

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as in pushes

to force one's way muscling straight through the packed crowd of people waiting to board the ship

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Example Sentences

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.

Recent Examples of muscles Which muscles the farmer’s walk targets The move works nearly the entire body, but leg muscles, the core and shoulder muscles carry most of the load. — Hanna Wickes, Miami Herald, 24 July 2026 One year later, the XFL muscles its way onto the national sports scene with its first two games. — Assistant Sports Editor, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2026 Gringo Films does not sound like the kind of company that muscles its way into the global animation business. — Scott Roxborough, HollywoodReporter, 29 Oct. 2025

Recent Examples of Synonyms for muscles

Verb

Some voting laws have changed in Ohio since 2022, including the state eliminating its grace period for receiving mail ballots, a change that forces voters to return those ballots earlier.

— Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 23 Oct. 2026
This book forces us to consider how clothing can communicate identity without the body, or gestures, or the visage, but rather through arrangement and spatial orientation.

— Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue, 23 Oct. 2026

Definition of forces

Verb

The company reincorporated from Delaware to Texas in 2024, and its charter pushes shareholder claims into mandatory arbitration and limits derivative suits to investors holding at least 3% of the stock—a stake worth tens of billions of dollars.

— Heather Occhino, Fortune, 21 Oct. 2026
North Korea has been adding mines, barbed wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other fortifications to what’s already one of the world’s most heavily armed borders as Kim Jong Un pushes a hard line toward Seoul.

— ABC News, ABC News, 21 Oct. 2026

Definition of pushes

Verb

Not the kind of empathy that simply allows someone to understand another person’s struggles, but the kind that compels them to do something about it.

— Chris Gardner, HollywoodReporter, 14 Oct. 2026
Here, Hendrikx plays anthropologist to a culture that compels each of us—whether a rider or not—to find our own vehicle for fulfillment, then take it to redline.

— Viju Mathew, Robb Report, 30 Sep. 2026

Definition of compels

Verb

Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein looked at who shoulders the cost of the tariffs, examining which part of the tariff reaches consumers through higher prices versus which share of the price hike is due to other factors.

— Veronique De Rugy, Oc Register, 4 Sep. 2026
Elordi nearly shoulders the running time but plays his Hig a bit too humbly.

— Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 28 Aug. 2026

Definition of shoulders

Verb

However, the rotation of this filament clearly dominates how the galaxies within it spin, perhaps by funneling hydrogen gas along the dark-matter filament and onto the galaxies in a way that coerces their spin while providing further fuel for star formation.

— Keith Cooper, Space.com, 4 Dec. 2025
Haunted by the suspicious death of his ailing mother, Ali, a university professor, coerces his enigmatic gardener to execute a cold-blooded act of vengeance.

— Jill Goldsmith, Deadline, 14 Nov. 2025

Definition of coerces

Verb

Where the Cayenne’s steering is calibrated so that the road nudges the driver, Bentley’s elbows back at those perturbances.

— Byron Hurd, The Drive, 27 Aug. 2026
Montana props himself up on a utility stool for our interview, elbows on a wood table, while holding his phone in his hand.

— Selena Fragassi, SPIN, 30 July 2026

Definition of elbows

Verb

But the strain extends across the Global South, where developing nations struggle with a prolonged energy crisis that disproportionately squeezes the planet’s most deprived.

— Charlie Campbell, Time, 20 Oct. 2026
Meta squeezes two independent light-guiding cores into a single standard glass strand to double its bandwidth.

— Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 19 Oct. 2026

Definition of squeezes

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“Muscles.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/muscles. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of muscles

verb

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