How to Use batten down in a Sentence

batten down

verb
  • Time to batten down the hatches.
    — NBC news, 2 Nov. 2025
  • Leeds battened down the hatches.
    — Beren Cross, New York Times, 16 Mar. 2026
  • Venting toward the peak helps keep air moving regardless of whether the fly is fully battened down or flung wide open.
    — New Atlas, 9 Dec. 2025
  • These actions loosen up or batten down portions of the genome and are akin to opening or closing doors to specific genes.
    — Ivan Amato, Quanta Magazine, 22 Dec. 2025
  • Netflix is battening down the hatches to prepare for a sudden deluge of streaming viewers.
    — Wesley Stenzel, Entertainment Weekly, 26 Nov. 2025
  • At the time, his high school was on the brink of shutting down—but the then-teenager battened down the hatches, studied hard, and became class valedictorian.
    — Emma Burleigh, Fortune, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Canada defended well in the first half of the loss and tried to batten down the hatches, but ultimately gave up two quick goals due to minor errors at the back of the pitch.
    — Joshua Kloke, New York Times, 25 June 2026
  • But despite the sentiment that all is well in the economy, investors are flocking to the safe-haven asset of gold—usually a sign that traders are battening down the hatches.
    — Eleanor Pringle, Fortune, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Italian luxury sports carmaker Ferrari usually rides out any financial storms while lesser mortals issue profit warnings and are forced to batten down the hatches to ward off trouble.
    — Neil Winton, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Rather, his team battened down the hatches, closed the first half on a 7-0 run,and never looked back en route to a 57-48 victory over West Memphis in the 5A-East Conference opener for each team.
    — Arkansas Online, 10 Jan. 2026
  • Aronson happened to snap an iPhone photo of FBI agents and New York Police Department officers battening down Epstein’s solid oak front door that wound up on the front page of The New York Times in 2019.
    — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 18 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'batten down.' 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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