How to Use thwack in a Sentence

thwack

1 of 2 verb
  • A book fell off the shelf and thwacked me on the head.
  • The back door flung open, then thwacked shut.
    — Lizz Schumer, PEOPLE, 20 Jan. 2026
  • Sometimes, there’s just one kid in the class who needs to be thwacked for good measure.
    — Time, 25 Aug. 2023
  • Live fish — Momma Wong typically goes for the tilapia, which is thwacked, gutted and scaled in the store.
    — Grace Wong, chicagotribune.com, 1 Mar. 2018
  • The other night, a helicopter hovered over my old Craftsman, thwack-thwack-thwacking me into a new dawn.
    — Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2019
  • The group joshed around and one by one, stepped up to thwack golf balls towards a tiny floating island in the Connecticut River.
    — Amanda Morris, Courant Community, 17 June 2017
  • The videos had been spliced into a mash-up and served to me on Instagram as a looping carousel of orange squares thwacking babies silly.
    — Amanda Hess, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Washed away in a torrent, on Rocky goes, thwacking and plonking his way to Texas and then to South Dakota.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2018
  • If a jockey is thwacked off his mount, his riderless horse can still win on its own, like Garfunkel arriving without Simon.
    — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Modern readers may take heart in the fact that there are many excellent critics thwacking through the slop—albeit with freelance machetes, on newfangled platforms.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 27 Apr. 2026
  • But Bourdain chose his targets carefully, often made amends, and rarely thwacked his rhetorical skillet upon the less powerful.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 12 June 2018
  • Another was Tony Yeboah’s volley for Leeds United, thwacking in off the underside of the crossbar.
    — Daniel Taylor, The Athletic, 28 Aug. 2024
  • They have been thwacked with tariffs on steel, aluminium and components from China, and threatened with broader levies on cars and car parts in the name of national security.
    — The Economist, 14 Nov. 2019
  • The biggest barrier to recycling the rubber in the ball is the difficulty of removing the felt from the rubber core because of the tight glue designed to hold that cover on when it's thwacked by a racket.
    — CBS News, 6 Sep. 2023
  • Belgium had been thwacked by Italy and Turkey in the group stage of that 2000 tournament in a resounding message about the country’s prowess.
    — Andrew Beaton, WSJ, 9 July 2018
  • Or the one that conjures up the clip of him getting thwacked by Jalen Mills in the 2016 opener, causing a shoulder injury that cost him nearly the entire season.
    — Conor Orr, SI.com, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Another woman kept accidentally thwacking fellow showgoers with an enormous Vuitton bag shaped like an airplane.
    — Rachel Tashjian, Washington Post, 21 June 2023
  • The poem was accompanied by an image of Meg White peeking out from behind a curtain of hair while thwacking a kit featuring the duo’s signature peppermint swirl color scheme.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 16 Mar. 2023
  • With three classes of accommodation on board, passengers can sit at the windows of vintage cabins paneled with polished cherrywood and draped with blush pink silks as the train rumbles through rubber and palm plantations, giant leaves thwacking the sides.
    — Monisha Rajesh, Condé Nast Traveler, 17 Jan. 2024
  • Max Weinberg sat at his set, thwacking his floor tom, while Lahav fiddled with his dials, stalked into the studio to unplug, replug, and then just physically move the microphone closer to the set, then to the side, and then farther away.
    — Peter Ames Carlin, Rolling Stone, 13 Aug. 2025
  • Club World Cup viewers may remember the South American receiving the ball, skipping past an opponent, and thwacking in a long-range goal against Urawa Reds in June.
    — Henry Flynn, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • The challenge lies in the ferociously physical steps — an onslaught of thwacking arms, emphatic kicks, dizzying spins, swift somersaults, perilous balances and slippery contortions — and their relentless repetition.
    — Siobhan Burke, New York Times, 18 Apr. 2017
  • The lead staff member, a thin Ukrainian woman wearing a turban, offered to thwack people’s lat muscles with the branches—an Eastern European tradition that is said to move circulation and release toxins.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 14 July 2023

thwack

2 of 2 noun
  • Wilkes shouted over the thwack of the boat against the water.
    — Jeff Chu, Travel + Leisure, 30 Jan. 2022
  • The thwack of heat from a paving of black pepper on the pork ribs balances their meaty excess.
    — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 8 Dec. 2020
  • The thwack and pop of the paddle hitting the ball is ubiquitous.
    — Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY, 7 Oct. 2020
  • The thwack of the ball against a wooden bat makes a lovely summer soundtrack.
    — Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News, 4 June 2021
  • There’s something unnerving about the mundane thwack of the rhythms.
    — Andrew Ryce, Pitchfork, 27 Feb. 2026
  • And the thwack, the sound of the glove pummeling the boxing pad, supersedes the pain.
    — Abby Ellin, Condé Nast Traveler, 2 May 2024
  • She was interrupted by what sounded like a rifle shot — thwack!
    — Bob Shaw, Twin Cities, 4 July 2019
  • Ironically, China may have harbored a boomerang that will come back for a thwack.
    — Robert Hackett, Fortune, 21 June 2021
  • Paramount Skydance’s stock took a thwack Wednesday.
    — Dominic Patten, Deadline, 3 June 2026
  • During a practice session, Samuels once blocked one of my shots with such strength that the ball bounced off the wall with an echoing thwack.
    — Ulrich Boser, Slate Magazine, 7 Mar. 2017
  • At times the heads jerk sideways, as if recoiling from a slap, the gesture accompanied by a thwack of hand on thigh.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 21 Sep. 2019
  • Fay winds up with the Squatch Stik and takes a home-run swing at a tall tree, sending a loud thwack echoing through the forest.
    — Leah Sottile, SFChronicle.com, 8 June 2018
  • Snow pirouettes and swings Longclaw into one wight, takes a thwack at a second, and uppercuts a third.
    — Cam Wolf, GQ, 28 Aug. 2017
  • But Mbedu ensures that every thwack, knock and stabbing packs an emotional wallop.
    — The New York Times Magazine, New York Times, 6 Dec. 2022
  • The rhythm section built a clean latticework of grooves, with the drummer's fat thwacks slotting neatly next to the bassist's resonant thuds.
    — Elias Leight, Billboard, 31 Aug. 2017
  • With the roof shut because of rain earlier in the day, each thwack of racket strings against ball by the two big hitters created echoes around the old arena.
    — Howard Fendrich, courant.com, 15 July 2017
  • It may have been derived from thwack and merged with wacky at some point to form the slang version of whack, which indicates something crazy or messed up, like that game was whack, man.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes, 26 Jan. 2022
  • The camps echoed with the thwack of hammers nailing planks into place and with the grunts of men positioning sandbags on their roofs to keep them from blowing away.
    — Shashank Bengali, latimes.com, 30 May 2018
  • Much of this silence, though, was routinely broken by the thwack of a driver making contact with a golf ball, sometimes heard from as far as two holes away.
    — Tom Fox, Dallas News, 18 June 2020
  • Inland, the immaculate padel and tennis courts are always alive with the thwack of fierce competition.
    — Jemima Sissons, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 Jan. 2026
  • The head-on-pine thwack was audible above the Billy Ray, and several adult chaperones screamed.
    — Jonathan Rowe, SPIN, 5 June 2023
  • The jangling whine of the engine turns into a steady jackhammer thwack as the drill pounds steel casings down two meters, then retrieves them, now full of soil samples.
    — Genesee Keevil, Popular Mechanics, 17 May 2018
  • The lone call of the magic horn that sounds at its outset trails off into a misty landscape, a trickling brook, a waking dawn and the blunt-force thwack of a cold-water tutti.
    — Washington Post, 19 Feb. 2022
  • The thwack of fists hitting hand pads echoed through the studio as pairs of women circled each other, striking blows and blocking them, with a singular focus.
    — New York Times, 28 Nov. 2021
  • The arrow hurdled forward, unleashing an audible woosh followed by a distant thwack.
    — Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2026
  • With the stage set by Walsh and several thwacks of rain, Petty’s 18th Red Rocks show proved to be a memorable one.
    — Dylan Owens, The Know, 30 May 2017
  • There’s a frisky all-American quality to the jazzy cross-rhythms that propel the central section, punctuated by thwacks of bundled sticks against a bass drum.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 2 Feb. 2018
  • In his final two rounds facing the slider machine, Chourio rocketed lasers to all fields, the thwack of the bat reverberating throughout the back fields.
    — Journal Sentinel, 7 Mar. 2023
  • As expected, the songs were imbued with percussive vivacity, brought to life by sounds of childhood whimsy such as the toy-like whirring of a ratchet or the staccato thwack of a wood block.
    — Katie Reul, Variety, 8 Nov. 2022
  • Our ears registered louder thwacks compared with the competitors over the same cracks and expansion joints on-road—similar to the almost metallic clank of a bouncing basketball.
    — Eric Tingwall, Car and Driver, 26 July 2017

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