How to Use shock troops in a Sentence

shock troops

plural noun
  • But of course, the sober thinkers and the shock troops feed off each other.
    — Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 14 May 2026
  • The shock troops for this effort are also in place, and often on our streets.
    — John C. “chuck” Chalberg, Star Tribune, 23 Jan. 2021
  • It’s put aside the rule of law and civil behavior in favor of shock troops.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 31 July 2024
  • Now more than ever, the political coterie and the shock troops are aligned.
    — Antonia Hitchens, The New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2024
  • Many of the eight hundred or so shock troops who invaded the Capitol were drawn from their ranks.
    — Mark Danner, The New York Review of Books, 1 July 2021
  • The president’s all-too-late video calling off his shock troops was little more than a duck for cover.
    — WSJ, 29 July 2022
  • The thought of robotic shock troops converging from the ground and the sky is a strong impetus to give peace a chance.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 7 Apr. 2015
  • Stormtroopers wear Totenkopf skulls for helmets and borrow their name from Hitler’s shock troops.
    — Los Angeles Times, 30 Nov. 2022
  • The insurrectionists were his people, his shock troops, there to do his bidding.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2022
  • Inmates of asylums were taken to the front and used as shock troops essentially condemned to die.
    — Melik Kaylan, Forbes, 11 Dec. 2023
  • Storms like these, the shock troops of the climate crisis, are bringing with them unprecedented rates of coastal erosion.
    — Taras Grescoe, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 July 2022
  • German shock troops also were hurled against Allied troops rushing ashore from landing barges, the broadcast said.
    — sandiegouniontribune.com, 6 June 2018
  • If Sanders does indeed win the nomination, these kids who aren’t all right will be the shock troops of his revolution.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 14 Feb. 2020
  • Journalists were the shock troops allowing the nation to experience the storm from the comfort of their living rooms.
    — David Bauder, chicagotribune.com, 11 Sep. 2017
  • They were deployed as shock troops, to claw back scraps of territory in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
    — Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2020
  • Paratroopers and other shock troops will parachute or fly alongside their ISVs and then ride them to their objective.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 1 July 2020
  • That tactic was inherited by black students who formed the shock troops of Martin Luther King’s crusade.
    — Ron Grossman, chicagotribune.com, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Imagine Vladimir Putin has sent his shock troops to level your hometown, to occupy your high school and drop a missile on the hospital where you were born.
    — Matthew Hennessey, WSJ, 10 Mar. 2022
  • Turkey has used Syrian opposition fighters, which include former jihadists, as shock troops for much of the fighting.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 6 Nov. 2019
  • With Bloomberg backing them, the shock troops of the food-and-drink police are undaunted by their setbacks and are seeking to impose similar soda taxes elsewhere.
    — Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, 17 Oct. 2017
  • While the Emperor uses his deadly shock troops, the Sardaukar, to maintain order, rival houses jockey for power behind the scenes.
    — Sean T. Collins, Rolling Stone, 12 Oct. 2021
  • The name conjured high-minded ideals of representative democracy, but this was a true fascist state, complete with shock troops, slavery, and degeneracy laws.
    — Cecilia D'anastasio, Wired, 10 June 2021
  • One of the outcomes of the fintech revolution will be to unbundle and unlock value as the shock troops of big tech breach the redoubts of consolidated, utility banking.
    — David G.w. Birch, Forbes, 28 June 2021
  • When the past does indeed come knocking on Bob’s door, flushing him out of his home with shock troops and smoke grenades, Bob is forced to violently recalibrate his relationship to the present.
    — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 10 Oct. 2025
  • During months-long campaigns, their army, which featured a corps of women warriors who served as shock troops, overran towns and villages, horrifically murdering some people as a tactic to get others to submit.
    — David Wright Faladé, The New Yorker, 4 July 2022
  • During the civil-rights movement, police were the shock troops for the massive resistance of the white political establishment in the American South.
    — Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker, 7 May 2021
  • Unless the barrier is breached by injury, autoimmune disease or catastrophic infection, rarely does a T cell, a B cell or any of the immune system’s other shock troops get through.
    — Kenneth Miller, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2013
  • Some of Ukraine’s new units will need six to nine months of additional training and some battlefield experience to prepare to serve as the shock troops and strike force for a 2025 offensive.
    — Alexander Vindman, Foreign Affairs, 25 Sep. 2024
  • But unless shock troops succeeded in seizing a Taiwanese port without seriously damaging it, these merchantmen would need some way of offloading their passengers and cargo.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 10 Sep. 2021
  • The shock troops of the Democrats in 2020 impose their brand of intimidation on liberal cities run by liberal Democratic mayors.
    — John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 29 Aug. 2020

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