How to Use pincer in a Sentence

pincer

noun
  • Crabs may be small, but those pincers can do a lot of damage.
    Noel Murray, Vulture, 24 Sep. 2025
  • There’s the snap-trap, where two groups of arms extend like a pincer around the prey.
    Veronique Greenwood, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2022
  • Their two front pincers can be used to attack prey and fend off predators.
    Scott Travers, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024
  • To chase them off, females raise their abdomens to show off their pincers.
    Tim Vernimmen, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Nov. 2024
  • But water doesn't have eight legs, pincers and a venomous bite.
    Scottie Andrew, CNN, 23 Aug. 2019
  • The assault from prices will be two-pronged, almost pincer-like.
    Rajrishi Singhal, Quartz, 26 Jan. 2022
  • The legs extended, the pincers closed and dug into the sea bed.
    David Szondy, New Atlas, 4 Jan. 2025
  • With luck, the pincer will come free and bring with it the cartilage within the claw.
    House Beautiful, 20 July 2012
  • Last year's bonfire was a giant crawfish with pincers that opened and closed.
    Littice Bacon-Blood, NOLA.com, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Three fingers were gone, stubs now, his right hand a pincer of thumb and forefinger.
    Tim Requarth, Longreads, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Fish eat some of the creatures that eat coral, while crabs and shrimp use their pincers to protect their coral homes.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Aug. 2019
  • For the claws, bend the lower smaller pincer shell on the claw from side to side and then pull it away from the claw.
    House Beautiful, 20 July 2012
  • Scorpions can be a fear for many people due to their pincers, stingers and venom.
    Dina Kaur, The Arizona Republic, 21 June 2023
  • The rubber crafts raced along either side of the fishing boat, squeezing it like a pincer.
    Los Angeles Times, 12 Nov. 2020
  • Meat racks, umiak frames and the occasional pincer of whale bones poked out of the snow dunes.
    Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Cut the links in half lengthwise for toddlers mastering the pincer grasp and serve with maple syrup.
    Katie Drakeford, Ma, Rd, Csp, Ld, Parents, 31 July 2024
  • Try to get pincers with a flat spatula design in order to smooth moss out over a surface.
    Kevin Espiritu For Partselect.com, Good Housekeeping, 29 Aug. 2017
  • The pincers are used for grasping prey and defending against predators.
    Tiffany Acosta, The Arizona Republic, 18 May 2024
  • The ant was shaking her thorax at him now, beckoning him closer with her pincers.
    Simon Rich, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2024
  • Near a campsite in Thailand, a hairy creature with brown pincers lurked under a rock.
    Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, 8 Mar. 2024
  • Its crew lower the robot — which is equipped with cameras as well as pincers — into the water.
    CBS News, 29 Apr. 2026
  • The team discovered that in snapping shrimp colonies with just one queen, that queen tends to lay more eggs and have a smaller pincer.
    National Geographic, 14 Mar. 2018
  • So Wormwood this year got caught in a pincer that needs further exploration.
    Gregg Kilday, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Just look at the robotic hands on this figure, with their pincer grips, like something from an assembly line.
    Washington Post, 9 July 2020
  • More prominent among males, the pincers are used for defense and mating displays.
    Nafeesah Allen, Better Homes & Gardens, 26 July 2024
  • Indeed, the pincer motion of Odontomachus ants is fully twice as rapid.
    Ryan P. Smith, Smithsonian, 30 Aug. 2017
  • The result was perfectly weird, a crab-looking thing with pincers, bird claws, and a flames coming out of its head.
    Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 12 Oct. 2023
  • All this can be done while having the cavalry circle from behind for a pincer attack.
    Jason Bennett, Arkansas Online, 7 Nov. 2022
  • That same type of reinforcement is found in the pincers of some modern beetles that contain zinc or iron.
    Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 13 Sep. 2017
  • Then the flood from Main Street took out her front door, squeezing her in a pincer of rushing currents.
    Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 29 May 2018

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