How to Use ironclad in a Sentence

ironclad

1 of 2 adjective
  • He has an ironclad alibi.
  • The company has an ironclad policy against revealing secrets to competitors.
  • But those contracts are ironclad!
    — Olivia Crandall, Vulture, 13 Nov. 2025
  • Little of this is ironclad, but weigh it against the harms, which are … wait … there are none!
    — Washington Post, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Nope, that’s not ironclad as a guarantee.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Of course, the notion of truth seems to have gone from ironclad to fluid in some people’s minds.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, azcentral, 13 Jan. 2020
  • Here are three ironclad rules that help my home stay (somewhat) organized.
    — Libby Monteith Minor, Southern Living, 21 Feb. 2026
  • Fellow campers had an ironclad rule that guns were not allowed in the forest, a friend at the camp said.
    — Tim Craig, Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2023
  • One ironclad truism about sports is that all streaks eventually come to an end.
    — Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 2 Oct. 2025
  • The habitable zone, even by any other name, was never meant to be an ironclad rule.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 6 July 2023
  • Once again, this isn’t an ironclad way to prevent the slippage from occurring.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Others aren’t so sure about that ironclad proclamation.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 6 Sep. 2025
  • But in a recent job posting for the position, the standards are less ironclad.
    — Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Dec. 2021
  • Today’s scene seems designed to display her ironclad control over her brand and her image.
    — Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 7 Feb. 2022
  • The logic seems ironclad that our gains have to be the environment’s losses.
    — Andrew McAfee, Wired, 6 Oct. 2020
  • What is new, however, is that these capacity rules are no longer ironclad.
    — New York Times, 19 May 2021
  • In other words, the Big Ten can be nimble because there is no ironclad plan with this stuff.
    — Star Tribune, 5 Dec. 2020
  • There’s also no ironclad rule that filmmakers must hew to the facts exactly in a film, even one based on real events.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, azcentral, 11 Dec. 2019
  • Not enough to declare an ironclad correlation between the two.
    — Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star, 26 Mar. 2020
  • Because Maurice wasn’t there, everything else had to be ironclad.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 24 Mar. 2021
  • And while the song is irresistible, the narrative surrounding it is even more ironclad.
    — Raisa Bruner, Time, 22 Jan. 2020
  • And the thresholds are just guidelines, not ironclad rules that should never be violated.
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 3 Apr. 2020
  • The Chicago dog is iconic, an ironclad part of the region’s food identity.
    — Chicago Tribune Staff, Chicago Tribune, 20 July 2022
  • Alexander Radulov was called for two hooking penalties, one ironclad and one questionable.
    — Matthew Defranks, Dallas News, 24 Sep. 2020
  • With its ironclad bank-secrecy laws, Switzerland has long been a haven for people who are looking to hide money.
    — New York Times, 20 Feb. 2022
  • This primer latches on to makeup with the same ironclad grip of your great-aunt Sally's hugs at the last family reunion.
    — Allure Editors, Allure, 13 Sep. 2022
  • This is an ironclad obligation, as firefighters put their lives on the line every day to protect Chicagoans.
    — Chicago Tribune, 26 Apr. 2026
  • In many ways, these band-aid solutions have driven the industry to search more intensely for an ironclad option.
    — Gopi Sirineni, Forbes, 29 June 2022
  • And that gives Israel the rationale of self-defense, the most ironclad right of either a person or a nation.
    — Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2023
  • And here's another pretty ironclad reason why the now-sisters-in-law didn't really get to hang out during that time.
    — Iris Goldsztajn, Marie Claire, 18 Oct. 2021

ironclad

2 of 2 noun
  • Even so, there are signs that the ironclad hold has begun to fray, at least a bit.
    — Luis Melecio-Zambrano, Mercury News, 13 Feb. 2026
  • One ironclad truism about sports is that all streaks eventually come to an end.
    — Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 2 Oct. 2025
  • The ironclad’s tenure at sea was short-lived, however.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 11 Mar. 2026
  • The movie’s universe has its own specific set of ironclad rules and that’s all that matters.
    — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 26 Apr. 2025
  • But that is not the same as an ironclad promise to respect the will of Brazilian voters.
    — Oliver Stuenkel, Foreign Affairs, 29 Sep. 2022
  • Today the bag is still made with the same ironclad material used in conveyor belts.
    — Jessica Sulima, Condé Nast Traveler, 14 Dec. 2025
  • Comments An ironclad rule in moviemaking is that only the director gets to call cut.
    — Jordan Hoffman, EW.com, 8 May 2025
  • During the Civil War, Eads won a contract to build Union ironclads.
    — Mike Scott, NOLA.com, 1 May 2018
  • Further, tech tends to get hit hard during bear markets, despite it including the biggest firms and their ironclad, fortress-like balance sheets.
    — Bret Kenwell, Forbes.com, 17 July 2025
  • Of course, the economy is buffeted by countless forces beyond the president's policies, so these types of projections are far from ironclad.
    — Courtenay Brown, Axios, 6 Sep. 2024
  • One of the most ironclad of laws in politics is that governments that face coup attempts almost always become more authoritarian in response to them.
    — Brian Klaas, Foreign Affairs, 17 July 2016
  • Some of you might be thinking that generative AI would always produce ironclad questions that are perfectly on target.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 5 Sep. 2024
  • Based on Knox’s statements, Lumumba was brought in for questioning, despite having an ironclad alibi.
    — Stephanie Nolasco, FOXNews.com, 6 Apr. 2025
  • The union also wants minimum pay rates for the use of AI to create digital likenesses, as well as ironclad consent requirements.
    — Gene Maddaus, Variety, 6 Nov. 2023
  • There is no way that Deborah — industry veteran who has been in many a contract dispute — wouldn’t have considered her ironclad noncompete.
    — Jessica M. Goldstein, Vulture, 23 May 2025
  • Human ingenuity and curiosity have pushed and pulled foreign information and media into this closed country, all against the regime’s ironclad will.
    — Jieun Baek, Foreign Affairs, 11 June 2018
  • Privacy rights An ironclad right to privacy for political candidates cannot be found in black and white in the Constitution.
    — Max Thornberry, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 14 Sep. 2024
  • Well, unfortunately, that doesn’t provide ironclad guarantees that AGI won’t figure out such practices on its own.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 24 May 2025
  • Yes, multibillion dollar deals have reams of attorneys, with plenty of experience, to write ironclad, clear agreements to prevent post-transaction disputes.
    — Jesse Silvertown, Forbes.com, 9 June 2025
  • The Basij is an Iranian para-military organization that is assigned to crush all dissent against Khamenei’s ironclad rule.
    — Benjamin Weinthal, FOXNews.com, 25 May 2025
  • So, with the Titans, this patience manifests in me as someone who doesn't believe in making a change unless there's an ironclad guarantee that the alternative is better than the present.
    — Nick Suss, The Tennessean, 16 Dec. 2024
  • But none of those come close to the double trouble mythical sea monsters that attack the ironclad in the Sea of Monsters at a crucial moment in both Clarisse and Percy's quests.
    — EW.com, 22 July 2025
  • Pay attention to the ironclad, near chronological setlist built through generations of trial and error response on the road, and watch how tens of thousands of people who were there for each step of Wayne’s career reacts to it.
    — Abe Beame, Rolling Stone, 7 June 2025
  • Yet when a message arrives from a potential client (Lily James) who needs his protection just to stay alive, Ahmed’s character abandons his own ironclad rules of communication.
    — Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 13 June 2025
  • Although environmental and health concerns are beginning to undermine our blind faith in milk, these beliefs maintained an ironclad hold over generations of American consumers.
    — Catherine Long, JSTOR Daily, 17 Jan. 2024
  • The verdicts also were a form of vindication for Republicans who have spent years criticizing Madigan’s ironclad, decadeslong control of state government.
    — Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune, 5 May 2023
  • Singer and others also voiced concerns about the lack of price caps in the $900 million cost projection and said there’s no ironclad guarantee the owners will stay in Oklahoma City even if the arena is built.
    — Sean Murphy, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2023
  • And on security, Ukraine is seeking ironclad guarantees against Russian aggression in the future, including Western peacekeeping troops on the ground.
    — Shane Croucher, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Sep. 2025
  • With Republicans squabbling over key provisions, Trump for the first time eased up on his previous ironclad demand that lawmakers get the bill to his desk by the Independence Day holiday.
    — Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News, 27 June 2025
  • For at least a decade, its management put speeding production to boost profits over sustaining the ironclad processes and procedures essential to building aircraft featuring the highest levels of reliability and safety.
    — Will Daniel, Fortune, 26 June 2024

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