How to Use beat back in a Sentence

beat back

verb
  • My plan is to beat back any skepticism and try to soak it all in.
    — Michael Silver, New York Times, 21 May 2026
  • Harry Potter beats back evil yet again, this time as an adult.
    — Scott Hocker, TheWeek, 22 June 2026
  • Bad ideas can be beaten back at the ballot box, in the public square, and through the halls of Congress.
    — Dhruv Khullar, New Yorker, 30 Nov. 2025
  • My grandfather used to use a wooden walking stick and beat back the nettles—just savage them.
    — Michael Schulman, New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2025
  • Missouri lawmakers have for years quickly moved to beat back talk of changes to the state’s firearm protections.
    — Kacen Bayless, Kansas City Star, 7 May 2026
  • Armies of volunteers are working to beat back buffelgrass.
    — Shi En Kim, AZCentral.com, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Of course, both can be used together to get a truly impressive beam that works well to beat back even the darkest night.
    — New Atlas, 15 Jan. 2026
  • However, its defenders quickly beat back those charges.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 31 Jan. 2026
  • The sight of Peter’s scarred, beaten back continues to inspire and inform.
    — Oscar Holland, CNN Money, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Johnson had called a vote on a longer, five-year extension for Section 702 that was quickly beaten back.
    — Jared Perlo, NBC news, 26 Apr. 2026
  • There are many new information sources with which frontline producers already are beating back climate change or adapting to it at the very least.
    — Felipe Arango, Sourcing Journal, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Videos on social media show officers in riot gear deploying tear gas and using batons to beat back the demonstrators.
    — ABC News, 6 June 2026
  • Venezuelans have endured food shortages and hunger; rampant inflation; protests by tens of thousands of people, who were beaten back by tear gas, water cannons, and worse.
    — Joshua Partlow, The Atlantic, 30 June 2026
  • Governors in Oregon and Illinois have beaten back his planned military deployments in their states.
    — Thomas G. Moukawsher, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Oct. 2025
  • To beat back the rebels, President Omar al-Bashir licensed a local militia to wage a counterinsurgency on the cheap.
    — Alex De Waal, Foreign Affairs, 6 Nov. 2025
  • But the ability to beat back our more routine pathological menaces is a good indicator of the country’s ability to take on bigger, more virulent threats.
    — Vann R. Newkirk Ii, The Atlantic, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Hernandez and Baffert teamed for two more wins Sunday as the rider beat back a challenge by Antonio Fresu in the jockey race.
    — Bill Center, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Sep. 2025
  • In the days and weeks after the 2024 mass shooting, Republicans moved quickly to beat back possible gun restrictions.
    — Jack Harvel, Kansas City Star, 20 Feb. 2026
  • European leaders have long warned against rushing a peace deal, seeing their own future at stake in Ukraine's fight to beat back Russia, and insist on being consulted in peace efforts.
    — Arkansas Online, 23 Nov. 2025
  • And of course, as has been the case since the beginning of MLPerf, Nvidia ran all the models and beat back all the competition, the few that had the gumption to compete.
    — Karl Freund, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Rolland Trowbridge is a Nome-ite who assembles military matériel for colleagues to take to the front lines in Ukraine, in an effort to beat back the invading Russians.
    — Ian Frazier, New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2026
  • On Thursday, the Interior Department was claiming to have beat back the toxic blooms — while doing a drive-by trashing of Barack Obama to please the boss.
    — Maureen Dowd, Mercury News, 23 June 2026
  • After beating back Luke and his forces and using the Golden Fleece to restore Thalia’s tree, and therefore the barrier surrounding camp, Thalia herself is freed from the tree.
    — Rick Porter, HollywoodReporter, 21 Jan. 2026
  • The governor has defended the facility as a model for state-level immigration enforcement and beaten back reports of alleged mistreatment within the complex.
    — Garrett Shanley, Miami Herald, 13 May 2026
  • But, a year later, science, education and civil rights organizations have beaten back some of the most significant policy changes in court, preserving billions in science funding.
    — Marissa Martinez, NBC news, 4 Feb. 2026
  • Missouri Republican lawmakers, however, have moved quickly to beat back potential restrictions.
    — Kacen Bayless, Kansas City Star, 17 June 2026
  • As a deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to spread, an aid organization says trust is key to beating back the virus.
    — Mary Kekatos, ABC News, 4 June 2026
  • Creating relations with the new government in Lebanon, now that Hezbollah has been beaten back, creating a new maybe normalization with Syria now that Assad's not there.
    — Meredith Wolf Schizer, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Aug. 2025
  • Lynch has easily beaten back Republican opponents over the past few decades, and his seat is considered reliably safe for Democrats, who are trying to take back the House from Republicans.
    — Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald, 27 Jan. 2026
  • The most recent of those votes came Wednesday, when the upper chamber easily beat back a Democratic war powers resolution by a tally of 47 to 52, largely on partisan lines.
    — Mike Lillis, The Hill, 16 Apr. 2026

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