How to Use bray in a Sentence

bray

verb
  • For once he is allowed to listen and learn rather than to bray through his own turmoil.
    — Rachel Syme, New Republic, 11 Sep. 2017
  • Democrats are braying at rallies in the street for Musk to get arrested.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 7 Feb. 2025
  • Then an old-timer hoarse and exigent with years bugled like a braying donkey.
    — Jack O'Connor, Outdoor Life, 2 May 2024
  • Besides, the clamor for alien disclosure is like braying at the moon.
    — NBC News, 5 June 2017
  • Other women were pulled onto the laps of braying guests and had men’s hands reaching under their skirts.
    — Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Old-schoolers would bray about Grier letting down his school, yadda, yadda, yadda.
    — Jason Gay, WSJ, 16 Dec. 2018
  • Leagues and team owners and sponsors will bray against it, because of their insatiable desire to make money, money and more money.
    — Kurt Streeter, New York Times, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Walk along the streets, where the only sounds come from passing bicycles, golf carts, and the occasional braying donkey.
    — Laura Begley Bloom, AFAR Media, 10 Mar. 2025
  • When Emily picked up dinner recently at a local restaurant, a couple of braying young customers laughed at her mask.
    — Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 23 May 2020
  • The need to placate a braying mob of X posters desperate to see Lemon in chains does not constitute an emergency.
    — Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic, 30 Jan. 2026
  • Expect more braying from the brash second-year signal-caller, the NFL poster child for inflated self-worth.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 9 Oct. 2019
  • The pack animals fiercely defend their flocks by braying, kicking wildly and charging, teeth bared, at potential predators.
    — Cnn.com Wire Service, The Mercury News, 21 June 2024
  • They’ve been besieged at Cooper Union — forced to hide in attics and spirited away from a braying mob through secret corridors.
    — The Editors, National Review, 22 Apr. 2024
  • People deserve liberal license to be themselves, and post-breakup people get an extra allowance to bray about cosmic injustice.
    — Carolyn Hax, The Mercury News, 16 Apr. 2017
  • Would that more institutions took that stand, instead of capitulating to a dishonest, braying mob.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 30 May 2024
  • The cool, quiet spring air is punctuated only by Kasbah’s small pack of mules braying nearby, and the tinkling of the riad’s fountain.
    — Anna Cafolla, Vogue, 10 Oct. 2025
  • Back then nothing signaled success like braying into a first-generation Motorola while sipping some cloudy, rare sake.
    — Patric Kuh, Los Angeles Magazine, 25 Aug. 2017
  • The villas are new but already feel ancient (in the best possible way), pitched in a jumble of sugarcane fields, date palms, and donkey brays bellowing from the adjoining farm.
    — Chris Schalkx, Condé Nast Traveler, 31 Dec. 2025
  • In a world of social media braying and relentless self-promotion, Holstein’s modesty is refreshing.
    — Véronique Hyland, ELLE, 7 Sep. 2023
  • There was no braying and shouting that often marks debates in the House of Commons and speeches were considered respectfully and heard in silence.
    — Brian Melley and Pan Pylas The Associated Press, arkansasonline.com, 30 Nov. 2024
  • During the 2016 campaign, no group brayed louder about identity politics than the Baby Boomers.
    — Joshua Mitchell, National Review, 26 Oct. 2017
  • The stock was down to several-decade lows, analysts were braying for a capital hike and the Justice Department was threatening a massive fine.
    — Jenny Strasburg, WSJ, 22 Mar. 2017
  • Brees and everyone else who’s brayed about Kaepernick disrespecting the anthem or the flag fails to realize that those are symbols for the ideals and rights enshrined in our Constitution.
    — Nancy Armour, USA TODAY, 3 June 2020
  • Online, an army of braying hucksters — digital-branding specialists, celebrities in the middle of breakdowns, the president — saw away at my capacity for complex thought.
    — Daniel Kolitz, New York Times, 26 June 2018
  • The first of the three legs in an inaugural fundraiser called the Wagora Bike Ride unspools along rocky red clay roads and through rutted jeep tracks, past braying herds of zebra and startled warthogs.
    — Tom Vanderbilt, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 Mar. 2026
  • Vanessa Bonet of the installation art group Dedo Vabo watched over a mission-control monitor deck, as the buzzing craft climbed into room full of braying hippos in rumpled suits.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2026
  • At that braying burst of illegibility — a sound both comic and upsetting — the other members of Mike Reed’s Flesh & Bone lunged into action.
    — Nate Chinen, New York Times, 8 Jan. 2017
  • As the insignias are cut off his uniform and his sword broken, Dreyfus (played by Louis Garrel) loudly declares his innocence, both to his brothers-in-arms and to the braying public outside the gates.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Meanwhile, conservative Southerners brayed at Truman’s gestures toward the Black electorate.
    — Aram Goudsouzian, Washington Post, 29 June 2023
  • What will count in the ensuing cacophony isn’t intelligence or expertise, but noise, with superlatives and exclamation points braying loudest and therefore replacing mixed and nuanced assessments.
    — Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 22 Oct. 2017

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