How to Use lurch in a Sentence

lurch

1 of 2 verb
  • Kirk lurched back and to the left.
    — Eric Levenson, CNN Money, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Don’t gag, don’t cry — and my stomach lurched.
    — Kate Crane, Rolling Stone, 2 Apr. 2026
  • In just 6 weeks, both long-term rates lurched upwards.
    — George Calhoun, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2025
  • The two sides have been lurching toward this end for a while now.
    — Josh Kendall, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2026
  • In three of those, prisoners lurched, moved or gulped for air.
    — Lauren Gill, ProPublica, 29 Apr. 2023
  • His mother has since said her son's views lurched left in recent years.
    — Anna Kaufman, USA Today, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Over the past four years, Lebanon has lurched from one crisis to the next.
    — Sarah Dadouch, Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2023
  • The big polar bear lurched forward, hitting top speed in two strides.
    — Scott Haugen, Outdoor Life, 4 Feb. 2026
  • At the sound of his brother’s voice, Jeff lurched away from me as though he’d been burned.
    — Aryn Kyle, Harper's Magazine, 26 Feb. 2024
  • The escalator lurched to a halt just after the pair got on.
    — Kathryn Palmer, USA Today, 24 Sep. 2025
  • Over the past 12 months, Iran has lurched from crisis to crisis.
    — Farnaz Fassihi, New York Times, 25 Aug. 2023
  • Wembanyama lurched forward, toppled and slammed the right side of his face on the floor.
    — Steve Henson, Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2026
  • Then, just as abruptly, the plane lurched up, slamming everyone back to the ground.
    — Burkhard Bilger, New Yorker, 2 Mar. 2026
  • Belfast Bay's stormy gray waters lurched under fast-moving clouds.
    — Justine McDaniel, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Sep. 2023
  • The two sides lurch past each other, unleashing an earthquake.
    — Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, 22 Feb. 2023
  • The mood is lurching between calm and doom-mongering chaos.
    — Carl Anka, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2025
  • Hence the lurching shift in financing.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 19 Feb. 2026
  • Suddenly everything lurched and spun and came to a crunching halt in a steep bank of trees.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 1 Dec. 2025
  • To date, his career has lurched forward one vocal bloodletting at a time.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 6 May 2023
  • The other day, a man lurched in, lay down on a Forte couch, stripped off his shirt and shoes, and refused to leave.
    — Jordan Gale Jan Hoffman, New York Times, 31 July 2023
  • Nelson then lurched his truck forward, striking but not injuring the guard.
    — oregonlive, 8 May 2023
  • Long road trips, cruises, airplane takeoffs, and landings—all make my stomach lurch.
    — Francesca Krempa, Travel + Leisure, 9 June 2026
  • Sure enough, a big rock upended from beneath my toe and sent me lurching headlong to the water.
    — Bryan Hendricks, Arkansas Online, 15 Feb. 2026
  • The old theater, which opened in 1925, seemed to be lurching toward its grave.
    — Laura L. Davis, Nashville Tennessean, 9 Nov. 2025
  • In many ways, life in Portland has been lurching back to normalcy ever since.
    — Mrussell, oregonlive, 31 July 2023
  • The rest of America's schools will lurch into a new pandemic school year over the next few weeks.
    — Erin Richards, USA TODAY, 28 Aug. 2020
  • The title track opens the affair by lurching and creeping forward for ten minutes with odd, off-putting lyrics.
    — Jed Gottlieb, Boston Herald, 13 Sep. 2025
  • The ladies haven’t had that problem, lurching out of the gate like the racehorses at Ascot.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 1 May 2026
  • Taking the ride with Lazy Horse means embracing that chaos, lurching from song to song.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2026
  • The mainland lurched through a summer of triple-digit heat, flooding and drought that killed dozens and hurt harvests of staple crops.
    — Jennifer Jett, NBC News, 25 Oct. 2023

lurch

2 of 2 noun
  • But in this ballot contest, horse racing has been left in the lurch.
    — George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2022
  • When bad times hit or foreign lenders get spooked, governments are left in the lurch.
    — Patricia Cohen, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2023
  • The pitch is a bank-beating yield without the daily lurch of the stock market.
    — Dara-Abasi Ita, Forbes.com, 20 June 2026
  • As the truck lurches forward, children are still hanging from its back.
    — Erin O'Brien, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Feb. 2023
  • The offense lurches to life here and there, but mostly remains stuck in neutral.
    — Bryce Miller, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 June 2023
  • James left Miami in the same lurch after four years in South Beach.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 4 July 2022
  • If a franchisor changes corporate management or gets sold, a franchisee can be left in the lurch.
    — Mae Anderson, ajc, 6 Aug. 2022
  • When insurers fail to promptly pay medical bills, patients are left in the lurch.
    — Jay Hancock, USA TODAY, 5 Oct. 2021
  • The legal battles have left millions of student loan borrowers in the lurch.
    — Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Anchorage Daily News, 23 Nov. 2022
  • The back-and-forth has left Ohio families of transgender children in a lurch.
    — Anumita Kaur, Washington Post, 24 Jan. 2024
  • Local rails, though, could see disruptions should a rail strike occur -- leaving commuters in a lurch.
    — Sarah Kolinovsky, ABC News, 28 Nov. 2022
  • Apple didn’t comment on leaving customers in the lurch, but confirmed to me the new iPhone shots take up more space.
    — Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post, 26 Sep. 2023
  • The lurch, the dying of the engine sound, and the red flashing of the gear indicator all came down to software.
    — Tim Stevens, Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2023
  • With a barely perceptible lurch, the airboat hurdled the canal bank and seemed to hover above it.
    — Nathaniel Rich, Harpers Magazine, 20 Aug. 2025
  • The platforms are huge and wield their control like market makers, often leaving drivers in the lurch.
    — Erin Griffith, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2022
  • Truck drivers are left in the lurch after flocking to the industry during Covid.
    — Elizabeth Both, NBC News, 3 July 2023
  • Google can’t continue to leave Pixel Watch 2 owners in the lurch.
    — Brandon Widder, The Verge, 16 Dec. 2023
  • None of these lurches are as important as her ability to see and describe herself making them.
    — Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2023
  • This maximizes distance, backlashes, and prevents sudden lurches that may cause your line to seize up and snap.
    — Pete Robbins, Field & Stream, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Slumping consumer sentiment, poor finances and years of shifting shopping habits have left some of these aging chains in a lurch.
    — Jordan Valinsky, CNN Money, 30 Dec. 2025
  • The abrupt announcement leaves hundreds of underclass students in the lurch about where to finish their degrees.
    — Kelly Meyerhofer, Journal Sentinel, 10 Apr. 2023
  • Because some of these workers have been arrested, detained or fled the country in fear this year, some families are in a lurch.
    — Madeline Mitchell, USA Today, 10 Dec. 2025
  • Earn platform, which lets retail customers lend Bitcoin and crypto for up to 8% returns, in the lurch.
    — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 5 Jan. 2023
  • Her subject matter — romantic disappointment, being left in the lurch — is the same, but the stakes are much greater now.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 4 July 2023
  • The lawsuit has left many farmers of color in the lurch, particularly in Texas.
    — Dallas News, 21 June 2022
  • That leaves 13 matchdays with unequal results, and a lurch of momentum toward one or the other.
    — Amy Lawrence, New York Times, 14 Mar. 2026
  • The beat, provided by live drums, lurches and lumbers, following the knotty runs of notes instead of setting up a pulse.
    — Reed Jackson, SPIN, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Each represents swing districts where the rightward lurch of their conference threatens their seats in the lower chamber next year.
    — David Sivak, Washington Examiner, 17 Oct. 2023
  • That could force builders to hold on to properties longer than expected and also leave buyers in the lurch and waiting on Congress.
    — Evan Bush, NBC News, 28 Sep. 2023
  • OpenAI may have little choice but to undergo this commercial lurch.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 22 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lurch.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: