How to Use hostile in a Sentence

hostile

adjective
Definition of hostilenext
Synonyms for hostilenext
  • The camel is specially adapted to its hostile desert habitat.
  • It will also be exploited by a constellation of actors hostile to Western interests and a free and open Red Sea.
    — Johnnie Carson, Foreign Affairs, 19 July 2024
  • Then Paul had a hostile takeover in the fourth quarter.
    — Duane Rankin, The Arizona Republic, 5 May 2022
  • The city, still ruled by Jim Crow laws, proved hostile.
    — Teresa Nowakowski, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Nov. 2023
  • And, as is often the case, some of those ads have been hostile.
    — Trisha Thadani, SFChronicle.com, 2 Nov. 2020
  • Most of the celebrities were deemed hostile to Trump and his policies.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 30 Oct. 2020
  • The story of Trump’s rise is often told as a hostile takeover.
    — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 3 May 2020
  • Tang isn't the first person in the Phoenix area to be openly hostile to the self-driving fleet.
    — Roberto Baldwin, Car and Driver, 14 Feb. 2020
  • If Comcast does make a hostile bid for Fox, there will be irony in it.
    — The Economist, 17 Feb. 2018
  • The robots play a more hostile part of the game’s peaceful narrative, and are the force against that.
    — George Yang, Wired, 17 May 2021
  • Duke punched back in the second half, but the Cardinals held steady in front of a wild and hostile crowd.
    — Lucas Aulbach, The Courier-Journal, 3 Apr. 2020
  • But many of the callers were hostile and confused, Rose said.
    — Washington Post, 4 Jan. 2021
  • The two sides — Oscar and the league — haven’t been openly hostile, just … estranged.
    — Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star, 24 June 2018
  • That division was shut down in the face of a failed hostile takeover from Broadcom.
    — Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 19 Aug. 2022
  • For years, Americans had been hostile to the Paris avant-garde.
    — Hugh Eakin, The Atlantic, 12 July 2022
  • There is overwhelming chaos in the universe, and our part in it is hostile.
    — Roberto Brunelli, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Oct. 2023
  • To make matters worse, much of the unit artillery is lost during the landing to hostile fire.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Some are hostile, some are flighty, others are just dicks.
    — Joshua Rivera, GQ, 29 Jan. 2018
  • All of that sent heavy, hostile messages to North Korea.
    — Alex Ward, Vox, 12 Dec. 2018
  • And then people do get angry at them and do get hostile.
    — CBS News, 29 Mar. 2023
  • To hostile eyes, any Asian, whether Chinese or not, could be a target.
    — Ligaya Mishan David Chow, New York Times, 19 Sep. 2023
  • My manager, the person who hired me, was hostile and rude to me three times in one day.
    — Roxane Gay, New York Times, 28 Aug. 2021
  • To be that hostile and petty — to friends, no less, who are feeding them dinner — sounds deeply jerky to me.
    — Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 5 May 2023
  • But their art was was made in a time when the world was even more hostile to female artists or female genius.
    — Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 14 May 2021
  • Don’t speed and keep a bucket in the car to avoid having to stop at restrooms in hostile locations.
    — Joe Guillen, Detroit Free Press, 27 Sep. 2020
  • Renters’ groups tended to be as hostile as anyone else.
    — Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, 21 Apr. 2018
  • Iran will remain hostile to Israel and the United States.
    — Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr, Foreign Affairs, 20 Nov. 2023
  • But perhaps the most common form of hostile seating is even subtler: the utter lack of it in some places.
    — Kurt Kohlstedt, Wired, 5 Oct. 2020
  • Chan said that some of the hostile rhetoric has already begun to seep into the election cycle.
    — Kimmy Yam, NBC News, 28 Oct. 2023
  • Discoveries Venus, sometimes called Earth’s evil twin for its surface temperatures that can melt lead and clouds made of corrosive sulfuric acid, is perhaps the place most hostile to life in the solar system.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 3 Aug. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hostile.' 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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