How to Use machine-gun in a Sentence

machine-gun

1 of 2 adjective
  • The melody and Coriolanus’ calls to Lucy Gray come alive in the woods, prompting him to machine-gun the trees to stop the noise.
    — EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
  • But the men on the hill were ready and laid down suppressive machine-gun fire of their own.
    — Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
  • His team flew toward a farmhouse that held a machine-gun nest.
    — Michael Wilson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2023
  • The bullets were clipped together in long strands for rapid, machine-gun fire.
    — Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Hundreds of thousands have fled to the south, leaving a silence broken only by the pop of machine-gun fire and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks.
    — Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2023
  • The darkness soon erupted with machine-gun fire, thudding bazookas and something else.
    — David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • Suddenly, a German fighter plane pounced on the lumbering Liberator and tore it in half with a burst of machine-gun fire.
    — Steve Straessle, Arkansas Online, 3 July 2023
  • Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
    — Scott Howard-Cooper., Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2024
  • All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
    — Patrick Kingsley Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2024
  • At least two Soviet MiGs — accounts of how many exactly vary — appeared suddenly and strafed the Neptune with machine-gun fire that tore into the plane and set the left engine afire.
    — Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Smedley, for whom a stretch of Interstate 4 between Orange and Seminole counties is named, died in a one-man assault on an enemy machine-gun nest in Vietnam.
    — Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Depending on drive mode and throttle position, the eight-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission can be machine-gun quick or comfortably relaxed.
    — Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 22 Aug. 2023
  • People were trapped in the open, incinerated, asphyxiated and strafed with machine-gun fire.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2024
  • The film’s fashion reputation preceded it; fans with temporary machine-gun tattoos mobbed the red carpet.
    — Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2024
  • In Mexico, drug cartels have recently outfitted monster trucks with battering rams and machine-gun turrets to use in shootouts.
    — Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Weber said modern inkjet printers with complicated, glitch-prone software remind him of his father’s complex machine-gun printer.
    — Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 14 July 2023
  • In this portrait of a remote and insular place, the machine-gun loquaciousness of both Eli and Naomi lays bare a spectacular self-confidence, but one that’s tinged with desperation and thrives on conflict of the high school melodrama sort.
    — Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 June 2023
  • The planes relentlessy pounded anti-aircraft and machine-gun positions and rocket installations.
    — Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 June 2023

machine gun

2 of 2 noun
  • They heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
  • Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard.
    — CBS News, 5 Dec. 2019
  • The birds will move around the trunk drilling holes that make the trunk look like it’s been strafed by a machine gun.
    — Neil Sperry, star-telegram, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Like the advent of the gun, the crossbow, and the machine gun, the atomic bomb changed the shape of warfare.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 27 Jan. 2021
  • In the video, Glover shoots a hooded black man and mows down a choir with a machine gun.
    — Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY, 6 May 2018
  • The man left his machine gun in Ukraine and owed a large fine for losing it.
    — Sarah A. Topol, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2024
  • There is the sound of machine guns shooting down drones.
    — Katya Soldak, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024
  • The thing Ben Asquith remembers most about D-Day was the sound of the machine guns.
    — oregonlive.com, 6 June 2019
  • The rifle uses heavy machine gun rounds and has a range of up to four miles.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 22 Sep. 2022
  • The attacker pulls out a machine gun, shoots the door open and kills her.
    — Valentina Pop, WSJ, 9 Jan. 2019
  • At some point, the guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers.
    — Michael Collins, USA TODAY, 18 June 2018
  • He had been issued a machine gun and was headed to the war.
    — Robyn Dixon, Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2022
  • Once all the Pogues are on the lifeboat, there's a tense moment where the boat stalls, and Rafe has the chance to shoot them with a machine gun.
    — Quinci Legardye, Harper's BAZAAR, 1 Aug. 2021
  • At a weapons range, the civilians were able to fire rifles and machine guns and rode in tanks.
    — Marc Freeman, Sun-Sentinel.com, 8 June 2018
  • Marines, armed with sub-machine guns, patrolled the area.
    — Johnny Miller — Jack Viets, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 May 2018
  • The gun in question was the notorious Thompson machine gun, and the time was the 1920s.
    — Robert J. Spitzer, Time, 6 June 2023
  • But the best may be the simulated machine guns mounted at the front of the car.
    — Daniel Golson, Car and Driver, 14 May 2019
  • Two-Face's whole role is to barge into scenes with a machine gun.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 27 Jan. 2022
  • To prove her point, Dolores hands him one of the militia's machine guns.
    — Sandra Upson, WIRED, 7 May 2018
  • The State Guard brought machine guns and shotguns to Boston.
    — Brian MacQuarrie, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Sep. 2019
  • The enemies have the machine gun while most of us are still hurling rocks.
    — Carlo Tortora Brayda, Forbes, 17 July 2023
  • Struck on the head and knocked down by a glancing machine gun bullet, 1st Lt.
    — Les Francis, The Mercury News, 25 June 2019
  • The soldiers told Bob and Donna about their son's skill with a machine gun.
    — Greg Jaffe, Anchorage Daily News, 27 May 2018
  • Clanton returned fire with the machine gun and killed him.
    — Sig Christenson, ExpressNews.com, 6 June 2019
  • There’s even a dude in a panda suit firing a machine gun!
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 6 Aug. 2021
  • He was armed with a machine gun and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, courant.com, 24 Aug. 2019
  • Five tanks armed with machine guns ran over one camp, according to the VA.
    — Julia Marnin, Miami Herald, 22 Jan. 2025
  • The air was filled with the shrieks of men in agony, the crackle of machine gun fire, and the thunderous explosions that shook the ground.
    — Alaa Elassar, CNN, 7 Dec. 2024
  • There, Reacher and Paulie fought for control of the belt-fed machine gun hanging from the ceiling.
    — Matt Webb Mitovich, TVLine, 27 Mar. 2025
  • The simplest of them, are little more than a machine gun on a tripod with a video camera and a servo motor.
    — David Hambling, Forbes.com, 18 Apr. 2025

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