How to Use pin down in a Sentence

pin down

verb
  • How much that may be is hard to pin down.
    — Brendan Coffey, Sportico.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • But those archetypes are hard to pin down at first.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 1 May 2026
  • What the joke is, though, is harder to pin down.
    — Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 19 Mar. 2026
  • Once pinned down, the wasp then laid its eggs inside its prey.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 27 Mar. 2025
  • Dove Ellis is hard to pin down.
    — Hannah Jocelyn, Pitchfork, 19 Dec. 2025
  • Jon Batiste has never been easy to pin down.
    — Okla Jones, Essence, 22 Aug. 2025
  • Maybe it can only be done with a word that’s just as hard to pin down.
    — Michael Schneider, Variety, 2 Dec. 2023
  • Sunday will be cool, wet and windy, though the specifics are hard to pin down.
    — Anthony Edwards, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Apr. 2026
  • The dream has to be pinned down, even though a faint trace of this truth still clings to it.
    — Literary Hub, 19 June 2026
  • But any animal will bite if pinned down.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 12 Apr. 2026
  • Our eyes are blindfolded, our heads pinned down.
    — Eli Sharabi, Time, 1 Oct. 2025
  • But even if the group’s sound is hard to pin down, the people are loving it.
    — Erica Gonzales, ELLE, 18 July 2023
  • Yet this wise fool and trickster cannot be pinned down so easily.
    — Perin Gürel, The Conversation, 22 Apr. 2026
  • Press a rolling pin down directly on the center of the dough ball.
    — Emily Teel, Better Homes & Gardens, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Macdonald had to use her whole body to pin down the squirming shark.
    — Linda Robertson, Miami Herald, 27 Mar. 2024
  • Trying to pin down the root cause of these thefts has proven difficult.
    — David Williams, Baltimore Sun, 16 Jan. 2025
  • The page alleged he was pinned down by the vehicle.
    — Charna Flam, PEOPLE, 26 Nov. 2025
  • Perhaps that’s what makes the film hard to pin down for audiences.
    — Helena Andrews-Dyer, Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2024
  • Loneliness is a feeling, which can make the source of it hard to pin down.
    — Jenny Singer, The Atlantic, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Physicists have long struggled to pin down the details of this process.
    — Ben Brubaker, WIRED, 22 Sep. 2024
  • The fire can help pin down enemy troops or stop their advance, crews said.
    — Serhii Korolchuk, Washington Post, 23 Sep. 2023
  • The audience cheered as the man was pinned down and his arms were tied behind his back.
    — Laura Bargfeld, Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2026
  • Pratchett’s politics are not easy to pin down.
    — Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 24 May 2026
  • Even the protein’s molecular weight isn’t pinned down.
    — Sara Talpos — Undark, STAT, 1 June 2026
  • Other challenges were harder to pin down.
    — Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 21 Apr. 2026
  • Perimenopause is even harder to pin down.
    — Patricia Bencivenga, STAT, 26 Mar. 2026
  • But the scale of this volcanic activity has been hard to pin down.
    — Discover Magazine, 26 Oct. 2023
  • Tildsley pinned down his fourth state title.
    — Hannah Hughes, Boston Herald, 22 Feb. 2026
  • The internet has made culture available to adults that are pinned down by life.
    — Jonathan Cohen, SPIN, 26 Oct. 2024
  • Which becomes harder to pin down, and thus some people will try and control it.
    — Daniel Scheffler, SPIN, 1 June 2023

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