How to Use machine-gun in a Sentence

machine-gun

1 of 3 adjective
  • Iron boxes of machine-gun rounds sit ready to be used on the deck.
    — Constant Méheut, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2025
  • His team flew toward a farmhouse that held a machine-gun nest.
    — Michael Wilson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2023
  • But the men on the hill were ready and laid down suppressive machine-gun fire of their own.
    — Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
  • But a machine-gun volley hit him at the waist, nearly breaking him in two.
    — Ann Goldstein, New Yorker, 25 May 2025
  • Baddies are plugged with machine-gun rounds so powerful their corpses bounce off cars.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 16 June 2025
  • The bullets were clipped together in long strands for rapid, machine-gun fire.
    — Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
  • The darkness soon erupted with machine-gun fire, thudding bazookas and something else.
    — David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • Noticing that all but one member of a machine-gun crew had been wounded, Orig volunteered to fire the weapon.
    — Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY, 3 Jan. 2025
  • The film cuts to a desolate South London street, the sound of machine-gun fire in the distance.
    — Hari Kunzru, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
  • In a startling image, a pregnant Perfidia fires off rounds with a machine-gun butt pressed against her swollen belly.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2025
  • But as the formation neared the landing zone, torrents of machine-gun fire told a different story.
    — Barry Barnett, Hartford Courant, 26 May 2024
  • Police said three of the guns had been reported stolen, and one handgun was equipped with a machine-gun conversion device.
    — Sergio Candido, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
  • The melody and Coriolanus’ calls to Lucy Gray come alive in the woods, prompting him to machine-gun the trees to stop the noise.
    — EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
  • Hundreds of thousands have fled to the south, leaving a silence broken only by the pop of machine-gun fire and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks.
    — Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2023
  • Instead, Shibata resumed his chops with machine-gun chops that popped the Tacoma Dome.
    — Alfred Konuwa, Forbes, 12 Oct. 2024
  • Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
    — Scott Howard-Cooper., Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2024
  • People were trapped in the open, incinerated, asphyxiated and strafed with machine-gun fire.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2024
  • The film’s fashion reputation preceded it; fans with temporary machine-gun tattoos mobbed the red carpet.
    — Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2024
  • Hood directed artillery fire under enfilading machine-gun fire.
    — Christian Datoc, The Washington Examiner, 12 June 2025
  • Suddenly, a German fighter plane pounced on the lumbering Liberator and tore it in half with a burst of machine-gun fire.
    — Steve Straessle, Arkansas Online, 3 July 2023
  • Weber said modern inkjet printers with complicated, glitch-prone software remind him of his father’s complex machine-gun printer.
    — Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 14 July 2023
  • The agency said the soldiers fired heavy machine-gun bursts from their positions near Maroun al-Ra towards a building in Bint Jbeil.
    — NBC News, 30 Nov. 2024
  • One morning this spring, as the sun’s orange tints seeped through my windows in the mountains east of Port-au-Prince, machine-gun detonations jolted me awake.
    — Monique Clesca, Washington Post, 18 June 2024
  • Just as young people want the information now, not in ancient and flat form, but in something that's much harder and more creative with a staccato, machine-gun style of delivery.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 23 Nov. 2025
  • In Mexico, drug cartels have recently outfitted monster trucks with battering rams and machine-gun turrets to use in shootouts.
    — Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2023
  • One of the first images that spread widely from that day was of a police vehicle coming under machine-gun fire, an attack that injured a policeman and policewoman.
    — Yaakov Lappin, Sun Sentinel, 2 Oct. 2024
  • But the Puerto Rican legend’s abandonment of her machine-gun reputation proved fatal in the final rounds.
    — Mark Puleo, New York Times, 12 July 2025
  • The planes relentlessy pounded anti-aircraft and machine-gun positions and rocket installations.
    — Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 June 2023
  • All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
    — Patrick Kingsley Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2024
  • The pamphlet offered instructions for how to acoustically recognize an incoming threat and how to determine whether the source is machine-gun fire, artillery fire, rocket launchers, or an air raid.
    — Joanna Warsza, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2025

machine-gun

2 of 3 verb
  • Armed guards patrolled federal buildings; machine-gun-toting snipers perched on rooftops.
    — Sarita Gupta, Time, 2 June 2026
  • Iranian speed boats raking ships with machine-gun fire in the Strait of Hormuz.
    — Jon Gambrell, Fortune, 24 Apr. 2026
  • In a startling image, a pregnant Perfidia fires off rounds with a machine-gun butt pressed against her swollen belly.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Police said three of the guns had been reported stolen, and one handgun was equipped with a machine-gun conversion device.
    — Sergio Candido, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Johnson put the toy/comics/cartoons franchise on his large shoulders playing the machine-gunning Cobra hater.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 4 Oct. 2025
  • And the Israeli army remains a few miles south, its presence marked by the occasional plume of smoke where its artillery hits, and the rip of machine-gun fire.
    — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2026
  • As seen in a recent action in Kupiansk, machine-gun robots can provide suppressive fire so the others can get through.
    — David Hambling, Forbes.com, 14 May 2026
  • Their recording was a kinetic thrashathon with machine-gun-fast guitar notes and solos and Hetfield’s convincing screams for mercy.
    — Althea Legaspi, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
  • The machine-gun conversion devices look like small, innocuous plastic components.
    — Michael Loria, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
  • The pamphlet offered instructions for how to acoustically recognize an incoming threat and how to determine whether the source is machine-gun fire, artillery fire, rocket launchers, or an air raid.
    — Joanna Warsza, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2025
  • Typically these include cargo carrying, casualty evacuation, mine laying, one-way attacks with explosive warheads, and direct combat using machine-gun turrets.
    — David Hambling, Forbes.com, 21 Aug. 2025
  • In 2024, Chicago police seized 604 machine-gun conversion devices, up from 81 in 2020, authorities said.
    — Michael Loria, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Senior Lieutenant Ivan Kavun, the commander of a machine-gun platoon in the 30th Mechanized Brigade, spent 486 days in a frontline deployment, according to his unit.
    — Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN Money, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Of the 300,000 Chinese slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army during a six-week period, most were civilians who were were bayoneted, machine-gunned and burned alive.
    — Martha Ross, Mercury News, 16 Sep. 2025
  • One Battle After Another will be set in the 1990s rather than the novel’s Reganomic-Orwellian era of 1984, but the machine-gun car-chase trailer promises the novel’s theme of American blockbuster violence will remain true.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Warning Shots North Korea issued a scathing statement Saturday criticizing South Korea for firing more than 10 machine-gun warning shots on Tuesday as North Korean troops worked on a barrier near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the de facto border.
    — Micah McCartney, MSNBC Newsweek, 25 Aug. 2025

machine gun

3 of 3 noun
  • They heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
  • The machine guns stood right in front of him.
    — Dallas Morning News, 25 Feb. 2026
  • At some point, the guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers.
    — Michael Collins, USA TODAY, 18 June 2018
  • The guard was armed with a shotgun and his jeep equipped with what looked like a machine gun.
    — Phillip Morris, cleveland.com, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Army has a panda riding a ski with a machine gun on their cleats.
    — Demetrio Teniente, Houston Chronicle, 9 Dec. 2017
  • He was armed with a machine gun and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, courant.com, 24 Aug. 2019
  • The rifle uses heavy machine gun rounds and has a range of up to four miles.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 22 Sep. 2022
  • Two-Face's whole role is to barge into scenes with a machine gun.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 27 Jan. 2022
  • The attacker pulls out a machine gun, shoots the door open and kills her.
    — Valentina Pop, WSJ, 9 Jan. 2019
  • Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard.
    — CBS News, 5 Dec. 2019
  • The man left his machine gun in Ukraine and owed a large fine for losing it.
    — Sarah A. Topol, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2024
  • The birds will move around the trunk drilling holes that make the trunk look like it’s been strafed by a machine gun.
    — Neil Sperry, star-telegram, 27 Apr. 2018
  • In fact, a nine-month baby bump doesn't stop her from firing a machine gun.
    — Gerrad Hall, Entertainment Weekly, 26 Feb. 2026
  • They were armed with small arms, machine guns, and a single-shot grenade launcher.
    — NBC News, 8 May 2018
  • At a weapons range, the civilians were able to fire rifles and machine guns and rode in tanks.
    — Marc Freeman, Sun-Sentinel.com, 8 June 2018
  • In the video, Glover shoots a hooded black man and mows down a choir with a machine gun.
    — Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY, 6 May 2018
  • Eight hours later, a man with a machine gun carjacked a man in a minivan.
    — Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press, 30 June 2018
  • The enemies have the machine gun while most of us are still hurling rocks.
    — Carlo Tortora Brayda, Forbes, 17 July 2023
  • An eight-second burst of machine gun fire comes from one of the helicopters.
    — Mattathias Schwartz, New York Times, 23 Oct. 2017
  • To prove her point, Dolores hands him one of the militia's machine guns.
    — Sandra Upson, WIRED, 7 May 2018
  • The founders certainly didn’t foresee the war machines guns are now.
    — Thembi Ford, Essence, 8 Aug. 2019
  • If the tracks are extra deep, the skiers may be carrying more weight, like a heavy machine gun.
    — Stuart Stevens, Outside Online, 12 Dec. 2017
  • The muzzle of the machine gun flares in the night as the man sprays automatic fire.
    — Marin Scott, NBC news, 14 Jan. 2026
  • The logo depicts a big bee in a sailor cap holding a hammer, a wrench, and a machine gun.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 13 July 2023
  • Barrow fired a machine gun at the prison to distract from the running fugitives.
    — Ella Gonzales, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 25 Oct. 2025
  • Die Hard is a loud movie, booming with machine gun fire and explosions.
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Dec. 2025
  • The troops behind the machine gun reportedly waved him back, yelling that the war was over.
    — Maryn McKenna, Wired, 31 Dec. 2020
  • Five tanks armed with machine guns ran over one camp, according to the VA.
    — Julia Marnin, Miami Herald, 22 Jan. 2025
  • The soldiers told Bob and Donna about their son's skill with a machine gun.
    — Greg Jaffe, Anchorage Daily News, 27 May 2018
  • The sound of the helicopter's blades reminded her of a machine gun.
    — Jessica Boehm, azcentral, 7 Apr. 2018

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