How to Use paunch in a Sentence

paunch

noun
  • He used to be very thin but now he has a slight paunch.
  • He sat with his hands folded over his paunch.
  • Still — the slim build, though it’s now accented with a slight paunch.
    — Mitchell S. Jackson, New York Times, 20 Dec. 2023
  • Then a burly, shirtless man with a hairy, sagging paunch appears at the front door.
    — Edward Kiersh, SPIN, 11 Feb. 2023
  • He had been hit a month or so before, but he had only been clipped across the paunch and the wound was healed.
    — Jack O'Connor, Outdoor Life, 24 Sep. 2025
  • The extra paunch would also have helped these penguins stay warm in the water.
    — Jack Tamisiea, New York Times, 8 Feb. 2023
  • Tapper emerged, a man in his mid-60s with white hair, a paunch and a large smartphone clipped to his belt.
    — Alec MacGillis/propublica, New York Times, 23 May 2017
  • My husband, who has a noticeable paunch, approached her next, asking her to let him by.
    — Judith Martin, The Mercury News, 23 May 2024
  • Beavis, on the other hand, has just a slight paunch and a few wrinkles to go with his reading glasses.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 5 Jan. 2022
  • However, hit a bone, the paunch, or a lot of fat, and the wound will be nasty but superficial.
    — Richard Mann, Field & Stream, 17 Sep. 2019
  • Joe wears a thin shirt streaked with three different colors of spills and shorts that sit under his paunch of a belly.
    — jsonline.com, 18 Oct. 2017
  • Why not kill two of these annoying-ass birds with one stone by making some friends and staving off that postgrad paunch at the same time?
    — Clay Skipper, GQ, 6 May 2018
  • And, outside a minor paunch and a rapidly expanding billfold, there's nothing heavy about him.
    — Michael Arace, courant.com, 10 May 2017
  • Gone was the Bear, and in his place was a lean man, skinny even, though with a paunch that came with the years, nearly 73 at the time.
    — John Penner, Los Angeles Times, 29 June 2021
  • Most of its members were older white men with trim white beards or ruddy faces, a Leatherman looped through a belt buried at varying depths of paunch.
    — Jeff Winkler, The Atlantic, 30 Dec. 2020
  • The bartender was a big, nasty-looking old guy with an enormous paunch, a flat-top haircut four inches high, and an unlit cigar turned backwards in his mouth.
    — Jamie Kitman, Car and Driver, 16 Feb. 2022
  • This was a small motormouth Italian man with a slight paunch, charming to his core, decked out with rings, and sporting an unruly mop of kinky hair.
    — Corbin Smith, Rolling Stone, 8 Apr. 2023
  • Not enough time to fall in love with gluten, grow a slight paunch, tame his golf swing, or find a wooden bench outside a tackle shop where everyone gossips and drinks sludge coffee.
    — Jason Gay, WSJ, 14 Mar. 2022
  • The burly mustachioed butcher had his bloody apron tied tightly over his paunch and was standing in the doorway, inadvertently blocking my way in.
    — Anissa Helou, Bon Appetit, 4 May 2018
  • There is a funny thread of everyone thinking Woody’s getting a bit old – rocking a paunch and a poncho – while Buzz pines for Jessie.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 16 June 2026
  • That’s because Kelly is as phony as her foamy pregnant paunch, having built a career on a mountain of lies similar in scale to ad man Draper’s.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 9 July 2024
  • The leader of all this non-action is the middle-aged Agent Garrick, a shambolic, avuncular presence with a paunch and a nervous cough.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2021
  • After a moment of shock, the designers outfitted him with a pregnant belly to deliver Tom’s now-signature paunch.
    — Seija Rankin, HollywoodReporter, 28 Aug. 2025
  • The Platonic ideal of underwear changed from the barely there thong to an oversized brief with a navel-hugging elastic waistband and a silhouette designed to hold in paunch.
    — Shira Feder, Vox, 5 June 2019
  • Pineda, a 6-foot-7 right-hander with loose limbs and an ample paunch, has been a confounding presence in the Yankees’ rotation for the last three seasons.
    — Billy Witz, New York Times, 10 Apr. 2017
  • And after conferring with Haynes, Melton decided to gain 40 pounds for the role, smoothing out his sharp jawline and adding a suburban-dad paunch.
    — Kyle Buchanan, New York Times, 26 Nov. 2023
  • After years of rigorous weight training, plenty of former athletes end their playing days and subsequently let their once steely cores morph into paunches and their rock-hard biceps atrophy into flab.
    — Gabriel Baumgaertner, SI.com, 20 Sep. 2017
  • Unlike Parisian pooches though, one distinguishing characteristic about Philly pooches is their unmistakable paunches.
    — Kimberly Garrison, Philly.com, 1 Aug. 2017
  • The hair may be grayer, the paunches a little more pronounced, and the joints a little creakier, but the Jackass promise of delivering the missing link between the Three Stooges and a snuff film remains.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2026
  • Kim, whose substantial paunch and perennial stubble lent him an air of cavalier dishevelment, occasionally spoke out against his family’s rule — and spoke favorably of openness and globalism — in interviews with Japanese media.
    — Los Angeles Times, Twin Cities, 15 Feb. 2017

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