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
“It will consume government. It will brutalize people. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars,” he said.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 10, 2021
“I didn’t brutalize anybody!” he feels the need to tell the people who see him.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 7, 2021
“Oliver Twist” exposes, on every page, the hypocrisy of those who brutalize vulnerable children and claim to be virtuous in the process.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2018
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
And cold, cold day and night, cold that brutalizes, that degenerates you till you would sell your soul, your mother's soul to be warm again.
From Home Fires in France by Dorothy Canfield
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
A sophist is a forger, and this forger sometimes brutalizes good sense.
From The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo
All punishment which is not tempered with forgiveness is brutal; and brutalizes both punisher and punished.
From Practical Ethics by William De Witt Hyde
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
In Los Angeles, the sun was rising over neighborhoods brutalized by flames.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2025
When, in the mid-20th century, President Dwight Eisenhower’s “mighty network of highways” spread its tentacles across the landscape, it brutalized nature.
From Slate ● May 25, 2024
The teachers and children here were not as brutalized as in the old school.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients of temporary protected status, or TPS.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
While Roger Federer is depicted as James Bond, in a tux, elegant and wrinkle-free, Nadal is called Rambo, ripped and relentless, brutalizing the ball and opponents alike.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026
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.
