How to Use cross fire in a Sentence

cross fire

noun
  • Expect more of this cross fire over how to carve up the state’s gambling turf.
    — Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 Oct. 2021
  • With sirens wailing, police and event volunteers rushed to tend to those caught in the cross fire.
    — Robert Moran, Philly.com, 27 June 2018
  • Lester said 70 to 80 people were in the vicinity of the gunfire and many were caught in the cross fire.
    — Bill Hutchinson, ABC News, 4 May 2022
  • For two months they were trapped in their house, without electricity, windows shattered, caught in the cross fire of constant shelling.
    — George Packer, The Atlantic, 6 Sep. 2022
  • The youngsters caught in a political cross fire have been robbed of their childhood — robbed of the music of family.
    — Vanessa Hua, SFChronicle.com, 27 June 2019
  • The market has indiscriminately penalized tech stocks across the board and cybersecurity stocks are simply caught in the cross fire.
    — Beth Kindig, Forbes, 10 June 2022
  • That work is possible thanks to an exception in California’s penal code that specifically carves out privileges for journalists to cross fire lines.
    — Grant Stringer, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Aug. 2022
  • The ferocious media blitzkrieg that arose when both stories became public led to Allen and Farrow being maligned in the press, with their friends and family flinging accusations into the cross fire.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 23 Feb. 2021
  • Meanwhile the 10 to 15 million Americans who rely on opioids to control their chronic pain – and who are not contributing to the drug epidemic – were caught in the cross fire, Kroenke said.
    — Shari Rudavsky, Indianapolis Star, 10 June 2019
  • During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, tanker ships caught in the cross fire ended up at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, which scared off potential customers.
    — Shane Harris, The Atlantic, 26 Mar. 2026
  • Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ call to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of battle.
    — Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News, 15 May 2023
  • And The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is competing against Sirāt for Best International Feature, dramatizes the real-life killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl caught in the cross fire of the Gaza war in 2024.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 12 Mar. 2026

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