jackbooted
AmericanEtymology
Origin of jackbooted
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.
Komasa knows authoritarianism in its most flagrant, brutal forms, but his new film “Anniversary” imagines a scenario in which fascism doesn’t stomp in, jackbooted, but creeps, pretty and ladylike, on kitten-heeled feet.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2025
In the 1970s, he said, people opposed to new and even existing restrictions on firearms began to talk about them “in apocalyptic terms,” with “the imagery of jackbooted thugs coming to your door.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 27, 2021
There is a publicity photo of the Cinna the Poet scene, with Joseph Cotten appearing as one of the jackbooted thugs; Cotten had playfully signed it, “To my greatest admirer, Norman Lloyd.”
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 4, 2015
What’s more, Radar does not dispatch a V for Vendetta fantasy of jackbooted thugs to people’s doors after it uncovers a worrisome tweet.
From Slate ● Nov. 4, 2014
Mr. Nossik, his voice quavering as though he'd just swallowed a fistful of feathers and sand, stamped his jackbooted foot and told Cade to GET OUT of the classroom immediately.
From "100 Sideways Miles" by Andrew 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.
