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.
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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
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
The original May 6 launch was scuttled hours before takeoff due to a balky rocket valve.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2024
They draped these over the balky apparatus and localized the radiation source to Kamen’s fly, which evidently had collected a heavy burden of waste radio-phosphorus from Kamen’s work for John Lawrence.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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
Thus will begin the second session of the 95th Congress, one of the boldest and balkiest in memory.
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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