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:
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
Miles said his balky back no longer allows him to shoot, and it’s also kept him away from Seattle U games, which he attended regularly before the pandemic.
From Seattle Times ● May 17, 2024
Hudson had back-to-back Tommy John surgeries in 2012 and 2013, but he was derailed by a pair of balky knees in 2022 and 2023.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2024
There he was immersed in an effort to produce high-energy protons to probe the atomic nucleus, using his balky Tesla coils and Van de Graaff generators.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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
Carter may also find the Federal Reserve balkier than before.
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 Edna Ferber
By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2017
It was the balkiest Yankee machine since Manager Joe McCarthy got behind the steering wheel nine years ago.
From Time Magazine Archive
Foreign policy brought Bush his greatest successes, and it is the area in which a President can act more or less on his own, without being greatly hampered by even the balkiest Congress.
From Time Magazine Archive
He rode herd on the balkiest members of his own party, hammered patchwork Administration proposals into workable legislation.
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 William Dean Howells
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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.
