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
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 Ferber, Edna
By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2017
Replace the balkiest portions with gleaming fiber-optic wire.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
On the second floor, directly, judging from the noise, over the stall of the balkiest horse in the stable below, is the room of the Madame.
From The Witches of New York by Doesticks, Q. K. Philander
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.
