How to Use beat back in a Sentence

beat back

phrasal verb
Definition of beat backnext
  • To beat back the Russians and their mastermind Vladimir Putin.
    — Greg Palkot, Fox News, 18 June 2023
  • But Democrats say the move is more about beating back the far right than saving Johnson.
    — Caitlin Yilek, CBS News, 7 May 2024
  • From Kyiv to Kharkiv, its troops were being beaten back by Ukrainian forces.
    — James Verini Paolo Pellegrin, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2023
  • But in the following months, Bragg beat back legal challenges.
    — Michael Rothfeld Emily Woo Zeller Krish Seenivasan David Mason, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2024
  • Most of the time, Black on Black crime is invoked not in a sincere way, but rather it's used as a cudgel with which to beat back talk about police violence.
    — Dana Taylor, USA TODAY, 4 Sep. 2023
  • In the fields As soon as Russian troops were beaten back from the lands surrounding Kyiv in March 2022, the region’s farmers came rushing back to try to salvage their crops.
    — Victoria Beaule, ABC News, 4 Oct. 2023
  • The contentious deal took two years to complete, and the companies were forced to sell most of Shaw’s wireless business for less than C$3 billion to beat back an antitrust case.
    — Derek Decloet, Bloomberg.com, 26 Apr. 2023
  • And if so, how dissimilar is that impulse from the hope that my writing can beat back a fate of inconsequence for me.
    — Mitchell S. Jackson, New York Times, 20 Dec. 2023
  • At nightfall, local officials put out an urgent call for volunteers to head out the next morning to beat back the fire.
    — Melissa Gomez, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2024
  • In the days since the deal was agreed upon, Democrats have been touting it as a home run for their priorities that beat back GOP efforts to exact spending cuts.
    — Allison Pecorin, ABC News, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Time after time, this damn disease was beaten back to hell by a man who had no give-up in him, a man who should be a Hall of Famer, a man who did so much for three of the game’s franchises.
    — Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Apr. 2024
  • What Lula Can Do Lula has a track record of beating back pro-deforestation forces.
    — Matias Spektor, Foreign Affairs, 7 Nov. 2022
  • Amazon has beat back unionization efforts in places like the Albany area and Alabama.
    — Jon Chesto, BostonGlobe.com, 25 June 2023
  • Governors for six decades have tried to build this project in some form or another and been beaten back by grassroots activists or state voters.
    — George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • The bills are intended to beat back a deadly substance that has infiltrated much of the illicit drug supply in the United States.
    — Jan Hoffman, New York Times, 21 June 2023
  • Few believed Ukraine could ever beat back its attacker.
    — Gideon Rose, Foreign Affairs, 13 June 2023
  • The man on the sidewalk appears to struggle to sit up, only to be beaten back down, according to the video, which was reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
    — oregonlive, 29 June 2023
  • America’s startups deserve much of the credit for beating back Covid-19.
    — Jennifer C. Cheng, The Mercury News, 24 Jan. 2024
  • But Raziq beat back the suicide bombers and brought stability to Kandahar.
    — Matthieu Aikins Victor J. Blue Peter Ganim Krish Seenivasan Steven Szczesniak, New York Times, 22 May 2024
  • Later that year, the governor would handily beat back a recall effort.
    — Vik Jolly, Sacramento Bee, 8 May 2024
  • Verna’s parents, like many of their generation, spoke German at home, and her father was educated in a one-room schoolhouse where a wood stove was used to beat back the cold Iowa winters.
    — Melina Mara, Washington Post, 9 Dec. 2023
  • The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had beaten back a large overnight offensive, inflicting heavy losses.
    — Raf Sanchez, NBC News, 8 June 2023
  • Trump still remains the front-runner, while DeSantis is attempting to beat back Haley’s increasing rise to second place.
    — Mabinty Quarshie, Washington Examiner, 11 Jan. 2024
  • Nonetheless, Gaetz teamed up with many caucus members to oppose McCarthy as speaker in January and does little to beat back the perception that he is allied with the group.
    — Molly Ball, Time, 18 July 2023
  • Now, Bloomberg Green has learned, a coalition of gas companies and their supporters are planning to wield the restaurants’ legal victory to beat back similar rules across the western US.
    — Bloomberg, The Mercury News, 13 May 2024
  • And cultural forces are almost impossible to beat back.
    — The Conversation, Fortune, 30 Sep. 2023
  • In villages in the northeastern Evros region, desperate residents on foot or riding scooters rushed to beat back fires only to watch bigger ones rise up around them.
    — Niki Kitsantonis, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2023
  • Western governments, led by former colonial power France, had for years been helping the Sahelian countries try to beat back the militants.
    — Rachel Chason, Washington Post, 28 July 2023
  • New York faced similar challenges with a burgeoning illicit market that the governor is still trying to beat back.
    — Katie Shepherd, Washington Post, 15 July 2023
  • Image While Raziq’s tactics worked in some respects, beating back the Taliban in Kandahar and earning him the admiration of many who opposed them, the strategy came at a clear cost.
    — Matthieu Aikins Bryan Denton, New York Times, 22 May 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'beat back.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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