How to Use hostile in a Sentence

hostile

adjective
Definition of hostilenext
Synonyms for hostilenext
  • It was a small town that was hostile to outsiders.
  • The camel is specially adapted to its hostile desert habitat.
  • Her suggestions were given a hostile reception.
  • They were entering hostile territory.
  • Things didn't remain hostile between the former fiancés though.
    — Grace Gavilanes, Peoplemag, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Defendants have since attempted a hostile takeover of the business.
    — Benjamin Vanhoose, Peoplemag, 5 Dec. 2022
  • The film presents us with obesity as tragedy, and as a preventable scourge inflicted on the hero by a hostile and traumatizing world.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 2 Dec. 2022
  • North Korea has criticized the joint drills as evidence of a hostile policy by Washington and Seoul.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 5 Dec. 2022
  • In The Kitchen, Wesker tracked the decorum from friendly badinage to hostile vernacular that co-workers sustain just to get through the day.
    — Armond White, National Review, 30 Oct. 2024
  • The new city was surrounded by rocky hillsides of this sort, except along the riverbank, and all the boulders on all the hills now seemed to have become giant heads, whose faces wore hostile frowns, and whose mouths were on the verge of speech.
    — Salman Rushdie, The New Yorker, 5 Dec. 2022
  • While some see civility, others in Manistique feel like the city has become increasingly hostile to one another.
    — Alexander Boesch and Lindsay Tague, Detroit Free Press, 31 Oct. 2024
  • As the body count rises, Eliza starts to see suspect behavior — as well as suspects — in many of her clients, whose actions highlight the myriad ways in which men can be hostile or threatening.
    — Cory Oldweiler, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Dec. 2022
  • The hostile vibes in the studio came across in the theater.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 18 Apr. 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
  • In the novel, an astrophysicist, as an act of revenge for her father’s murder by Red Guards, chooses to put Earth at risk by sending out a provocative interstellar message to hostile aliens.
    — H.m.a. Leow, JSTOR Daily, 5 Nov. 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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