balky
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of balky
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:
I jury-rigged a heating element for our Kenmore refrigerator’s balky ice-maker water-feed tube.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 2, 2026
Maintaining and fixing a balky machine teaches necessary humility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
There’s an argument to be made that the feds could believe they have a balky case and want to bloody up Adams in the public eye ahead of a trial.
From Slate ● Sep. 12, 2024
And the New York Mets’ balky late-game bullpen.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2024
They were balky, and it took me a few minutes to get them inside and the door shut and latched.
From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Carter may also find the Federal Reserve balkier than before.
From Time Magazine Archive
After dozens of false starts, he wants to get two of his balkier clients to say yes to a house he shows them.
From Time Magazine Archive
I was seated at my typewriter and the book was balkier than usual, and I wished that the clumper at the door would go away.
From Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed by Ferber, Edna
By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2017
He rode herd on the balkiest members of his own party, hammered patchwork Administration proposals into workable legislation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Replace the balkiest portions with gleaming fiber-optic wire.
From Time Magazine Archive
Joe made more news as baseball's balkiest holdout.
From Time Magazine Archive
All those stately equipages were good, and the one that fell to us mounted the hill to our hotel by a grade so insinuating that the balkiest horse in Frascati could hardly have suspected it.
From Roman Holidays, and Others by Howells, William Dean
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
