verb
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to make or become brutal
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(tr) to treat brutally
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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brutalizationnoun
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overbrutalizationnoun
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overbrutalizeverb (used with object)
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unbrutalizeverb (used with object)
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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brutalizesimple
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brutalizessimple
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have brutalizedperfect
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has brutalizedperfect
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am brutalizingprogressive
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are brutalizingprogressive
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is brutalizingprogressive
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have been brutalizingperfect progressive
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has been brutalizingperfect progressive
Past
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brutalizedsimple
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had brutalizedperfect
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was brutalizingprogressive
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were brutalizingprogressive
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had been brutalizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of brutalize
Vocabulary lists containing brutalize
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:
Whether or not he decides to appear at the trial, scheduled to begin later this year, the A.G. can use his videoed deposition testimony to brutalize him the same way Carroll’s lawyers did.
From Slate ● May 11, 2023
Specifically, a few decades of drought pushed the Huns to the brink, forcing them to brutalize others in pursuit of survival.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2022
He said the new commissioner should also commit to firing police officers who “abuse, harass, brutalize, and kill” and promote transparency by releasing more disciplinary records.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 6, 2022
“It will consume government. It will brutalize people. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars,” he said.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 10, 2021
The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders.
From "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
Any overacting brutalizes Cheever's prose; mugging is the artistic equivalent of a mugging.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now, then, you will understand what I meant by saying that our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower.
From Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold by William Savage Johnson
Frugality, in fact, softens character, in animals as in men; gross feeding brutalizes it.
From The Wonders of Instinct Chapters in the Psychology of Insects by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling necessarily.
From The Arena Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 by B. O. (Benjamin Orange) Flower
That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against odds.
From The Quality of Mercy by William Dean Howells
Wiener responded that “trans women are also brutalized in this country ... and cisgender women are brutalized in this country, and we have to protect the safety of all women.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026
This is not the first time I have encountered a situation where the hapless staff find themselves brutalized by loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2025
This is about as much of a review of “All’s Fair” worth venturing at this point, since pretty much every critic has brutalized the show.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
Mr. Trump complained about the charges against him and then about his own lawyers, whom he verbally brutalized privately throughout the trial.
From New York Times ● May 31, 2024
“Please, Gus. Not another word. Even my brutalized spirit has some sensitivity left. I can’t let you slander my girls like that.”
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Dahlia Lithwick: These were incredibly consequential gut punches, two more in a long sequence of brutalizing cases.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
The central deviation is that this “Speak No Evil,” with its more pronounced humor and catharsis, treats the other film’s scenario as a ghastly comedy of manners rather than as a brutalizing, unheroic descent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2024
Los Angeles built off the momentum, brutalizing Arizona with eight straight designed runs to start off a 75-yard touchdown drive to open the third quarter.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 16, 2023
In Philipps’s meticulously assembled and brilliantly written account, he is not a warrior driven mad by the stress of combat, a good guy gone rogue or a victim of a brutalizing culture.
From New York Times ● Sep. 3, 2021
Three thousand children crowded into this ugly brutalizing school that had facilities for only one thousand.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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.
