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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He’s got a balky knee, and now a painful biceps, and the Dodgers have kept him off the mound for a moment, but what happens in October?
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2026
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
They were balky, and it took me a few minutes to get them inside and the door shut and latched.
From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
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
He rode herd on the balkiest members of his own party, hammered patchwork Administration proposals into workable legislation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thus will begin the second session of the 95th Congress, one of the boldest and balkiest in memory.
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
Ed was one of the balkiest boys I ever had in my school.
From Reveries of a Schoolmaster by Francis B. Pearson
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.
