verb
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to make or become brutal
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(tr) to treat brutally
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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brutalizationnoun
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overbrutalizationnoun
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overbrutalizeverb (used with object)
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unbrutalizeverb (used with object)
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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brutalizesimple
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brutalizessimple
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have brutalizedperfect
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has brutalizedperfect
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am brutalizingprogressive
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are brutalizingprogressive
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is brutalizingprogressive
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have been brutalizingperfect progressive
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has been brutalizingperfect progressive
Past
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brutalizedsimple
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had brutalizedperfect
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was brutalizingprogressive
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were brutalizingprogressive
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had been brutalizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of brutalize
Vocabulary lists containing brutalize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Whether or not he decides to appear at the trial, scheduled to begin later this year, the A.G. can use his videoed deposition testimony to brutalize him the same way Carroll’s lawyers did.
From Slate ● May 11, 2023
The Conversation asked Rashad Shabazz, a geographer and scholar of African American studies at Arizona State University, to explore the societal conditions in which Black police officers could brutalize another Black man.
From Salon ● Feb. 1, 2023
“A White House job is not a promise of an unlimited prerogative to brutalize someone who was a victim of a prior attack,” attorney Joshua Matz said.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2021
They built a fledgling democracy with elected leaders who often failed but didn’t brutalize their people as so many regimes in the region do.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 17, 2021
The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders.
From "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
Any overacting brutalizes Cheever's prose; mugging is the artistic equivalent of a mugging.
From Time Magazine Archive
It brutalizes the men and prevents the growth of feminine qualities, coyness among others.
From Primitive Love and Love-Stories by Henry Theophilus Finck
Frugality, in fact, softens character, in animals as in men; gross feeding brutalizes it.
From The Wonders of Instinct Chapters in the Psychology of Insects by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Now, then, you will understand what I meant by saying that our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower.
From Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold by William Savage Johnson
A sophist is a forger, and this forger sometimes brutalizes good sense.
From The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo
This is not the first time I have encountered a situation where the hapless staff find themselves brutalized by loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2025
“I wanted that humanity because the real Guiteau was a deeply disturbed man who was psychologically brutalized by his father to the point he was a non-functioning person.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2025
This is about as much of a review of “All’s Fair” worth venturing at this point, since pretty much every critic has brutalized the show.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
When, in the mid-20th century, President Dwight Eisenhower’s “mighty network of highways” spread its tentacles across the landscape, it brutalized nature.
From Slate ● May 25, 2024
“Please, Gus. Not another word. Even my brutalized spirit has some sensitivity left. I can’t let you slander my girls like that.”
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
In a few seconds the CrossWave had squirted to its top speed of 55 mph and was skipping across the gentle swells in a blaring, brutalizing ecstasy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
Dahlia Lithwick: These were incredibly consequential gut punches, two more in a long sequence of brutalizing cases.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
The central deviation is that this “Speak No Evil,” with its more pronounced humor and catharsis, treats the other film’s scenario as a ghastly comedy of manners rather than as a brutalizing, unheroic descent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2024
Los Angeles built off the momentum, brutalizing Arizona with eight straight designed runs to start off a 75-yard touchdown drive to open the third quarter.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 16, 2023
Three thousand children crowded into this ugly brutalizing school that had facilities for only one thousand.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
