How to Use insolent in a Sentence

insolent

adjective
  • Insolent behavior will not be tolerated.
  • The fox would once have crushed this insolent creature with a swipe of her paw.
    — Hazlitt, 19 Nov. 2025
  • On the surface, Hyun-su is an insolent young punk trying to pick a fight with anybody who crosses his path.
    — Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter, 25 May 2017
  • His worst behavior is being insolent and arrogant with the school counselor.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 13 June 2020
  • Horn calls peaked the enormous tutti crescendos, and Till approached his somber end with an insolent whistle from clarinet.
    — By Libby Hanssen, kansascity.com, 3 June 2017
  • Streisand’s performance remains unmatched, even now, for its insolent weirdness.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2023
  • The government, in an insolent filing on Sunday evening, rewrote that instruction.
    — Ruth Marcus, New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2025
  • Parthenope is inscrutable yet expressive, insolent yet heroic, magnetic yet unattainable, loving yet selfish.
    — Mike Miller, EW.com, 12 Feb. 2025
  • The officers weren't rude, angry, or insolent — as required of a battery conviction — and used their training and legal authority to do their jobs.
    — Ryan Murphy, The Indianapolis Star, 2 Dec. 2024
  • The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Mercury News, 22 Aug. 2019
  • The play’s voice — almost instantly recognizable as the crude, insolent tenor of a 14-year-old boy’s, Rawley says — means there are a lot of vile things that get spewed.
    — Dusty Somers, The Seattle Times, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Dunn was a superbly insolent Mercutio, all flicking feet and snickering hands and insinuating pelvis.
    — Jeffrey Gantz, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Mar. 2018
  • Chaplin had a Hollywood studio of his own, and his mighty, insolent artistry had the intricacy, the precision, and the refinement of a Swiss watch.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 23 July 2022
  • Within a 10-minute or so span, Kyrgios was insolent, immature, compassionate and confused.
    — Sandra Harwitt, USA TODAY, 30 Aug. 2017
  • But the stage only lights up when Ribler’s Marchbanks is skulking around in his velvet smoking jacket, looking now anguished, now insolent, now ecstatic.
    — Washington Post, 30 Sep. 2019
  • Meanwhile, the insolent and hyper-confident Ruben (Stuart Campbell as a teen and Gadd as a grown-up) has been in trouble with the law from a tender age.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Malinin’s confidence would be insolent if his acrobatics weren’t so astonishing.
    — Sally Jenkins, The Atlantic, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Shortly after leaving Nurnberg, Bernardini agreed to read manuscripts for a literary scout if the scout would pay a fee of £50 per book, then expressed regret at having been so insolent.
    — Lila Shapiro, Vulture, 4 Feb. 2022
  • This chicanery makes Leave the World Behind the most insolent executive-office musing ever committed to film — a full-out assault on the nation’s people.
    — Armond White, National Review, 10 Apr. 2024
  • Ask my mother, who possesses, tucked away in her basement, the world’s largest collection of photographs of an insolent child pouting, scowling, smirking, staring at the ground, squinting at the sky or watching a squirrel in the corner of the yard.
    — Jason Gay, WSJ, 5 Aug. 2022
  • Writing about Sabatini’s many bad choices and insolent remarks always requires consideration.
    — Lauren Ritchie, orlandosentinel.com, 21 June 2019
  • As Omari, Kory Pullman turns the nearly impossible trick of conveying a troubled young man as both a stubborn, insolent jackass and a vulnerable, hurting kid.
    — Dominic P. Papatola, Twin Cities, 5 Oct. 2019
  • In particular, the character of Roy Cohn, incarnated by Nathan Lane with insolent glee, seemed to channel the voice of the current political zeitgeist.
    — Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Her subversive and dominating personality, and sometimes insolent rhetoric in her active X presence set her apart from the likes of other female AI chatbots, such as Siri whose aim is to assist and serve.
    — Fatemeh Fannizadeh, Forbes, 18 Oct. 2024
  • In the 18th century, lusty also meant insolent, which might have conveyed Anderson’s frustrations with Dina’s unwillingness to accept his authority over her.
    — Carolyn Zola, The Conversation, 11 June 2026
  • In 1778, a posthumous biography chastised the late Samuel Johnson for his bad bedside reading habits, characterizing the British writer as an insolent child.
    — Nika Mavrody, The Atlantic, 19 May 2017
  • Barely an hour long, the latest insolent marvel from Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues reinforces his expectedly subversive and sacrilegious tendencies, always paired with a pointedly tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2023

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