How to Use agonized in a Sentence

agonized

adjective
  • Many movies have dealt with the agonized grief that follows a child’s death.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Cannon’s agonized face fills the frame.
    — E. Tammy Kim, New Yorker, 17 Dec. 2025
  • Those waiting to hear whether their houses have burned are living in agonized dread.
    — Boone Ashworth, WIRED, 10 Jan. 2025
  • Sorry, did your eardrum rupture from the sound of my agonized screaming?
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 15 July 2025
  • An agonized woman, writhing and coughing and gnarled by disease, is found in a field on the edge of town.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 13 Feb. 2026
  • The agonized screams of family members could be heard from the parking lot outside.
    — Christine Fernando, USA TODAY, 25 May 2022
  • But there’s plenty of agonized screaming, as well as lots of closeups of terrified faces.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Neither species seems that pleased with the offering, though Maple June still, with an agonized look on her face, wolfs raw lemons down.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 8 Feb. 2022
  • His agonized screams were destroying the other soldiers’ morale, so Odysseus left him behind.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2020
  • Its videos of agonized parents clutching their dead children and bodies being pulled from the rubble flood social media.
    — Liam Stack, New York Times, 9 May 2024
  • And a scene between Sue and Reed near the end is heart-wrenching, played with agonized depth of feeling by Pascal.
    — David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 22 July 2025
  • Wasuwan probed her model’s back and shoulders with a long bamboo stick, then tapped a block with a mallet on her stomach, producing a look of agonized bliss.
    — Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Bradley’s vocal emphasis in the famed title role is on that character’s agonized response to the ascending chaos around her.
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 13 Mar. 2022
  • The look of agonized disappointment on Ford’s face as Han dies is more wrenching than the character’s plunge to oblivion.
    — Vulture, 10 July 2023
  • Garfield’s entire agonized thought process—his love for his wife, his worry about the future, his hurt pride at being unable to provide for her—dance over his face in a matter of seconds.
    — Isaac Butler, The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 2022
  • How exhausting, this insistence on art and art making as forever agonized and ecstatic.
    — New York Times, 21 Apr. 2022
  • While some series would explain away Camille's agonized path with straightforward flashbacks, Sharp Objects does not.
    — refinery29.com, 5 July 2018
  • Her endless screams and sobs echo back to the agonized wailing of The Mist’s David Drayton, who murdered his child and friends for nothing.
    — Josh Weiss, Forbes.com, 11 June 2026
  • Adam, ever the screenwriter, performs a brilliant editing job on his life, cutting out decades of agonized relationships and even normal conflicts.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 9 Jan. 2024
  • These are big, heavy themes — and the show seemed to make ever more clear the connection between the agonized, romantic darkness of being a teenager and the chaos raining down on our characters.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 1 July 2022
  • Researchers suggest that the woman may have been afflicted by a rare muscle reaction at the moment of death that immortalized her agonized expression.
    — Margherita Bassi, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024
  • Thirty-eight cars, some filled with chemicals, left the tracks and caught fire, triggering an evacuation and agonized questions from residents about the implications for their health.
    — Topher Sanders, ProPublica, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Death is a dreamily alluring soprano; Jean-Charles, an agonized representative of those aboard the raft.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2023
  • Legions of consumers now in their teens, 20s and 30s grew up in households where mortgage and rent payments, credit card bills and student loans have been sources of agonized conversation for years.
    — Christine Romans, NBC News, 21 Dec. 2023
  • Constantly cloaked in shadow or grimacing in agonized resolution (such good work from Luca Casalanguida there).
    — OregonLive.com, 29 Dec. 2017
  • The emotional comeback was all for not as the Rockets defeated the Rams 41-35, sending the remaining fans home in agonized disbelief.
    — Eddie Herz, The Denver Post, 22 Sep. 2019
  • And then there is the almost Shakespearean specter of Joe Biden, the agonized father grieving the loss of one son and terrified at his inability to prevent the slow suicidal decline of the other.
    — Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2021
  • When the man’s answers don’t prove satisfactory, Sean douses him and the rope that’s holding him in gasoline, lights them on fire, and gazes on admiringly as the rope burns away, sending his victim’s fiery, agonized body plummeting to his death.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 1 Apr. 2021
  • Farrell plays John, the ambitious and chatty servant who is seduced by the mistress of the house (Jessica Chastain), as a nervous bundle of energy who becomes more agonized and frantic over the course of the film.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 30 Oct. 2025
  • And, throughout, there’s the physical punishment that the performer-athletes take for their showmanship, the high price exacted by choreographic failures and reckless improvisations, and the mental torment that comes with agonized bodies.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'agonized.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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