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
Even with his career at its pinnacle and before his back became chronically balky, Woods found his way onto tabloid headlines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026
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
So there was Woods, with his fused ankle and balky back, carefully traversing the hilly property again this week.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 10, 2024
The machine had gone balky as an old donkey, losing Mr. Curtain’s train of thought and sometimes misunderstanding him altogether.
From "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart
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 Edna Ferber
By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2017
Joe made more news as baseball's balkiest holdout.
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
Ed was one of the balkiest boys I ever had in my school.
From Reveries of a Schoolmaster by Francis B. Pearson
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.
