How to Use trial balloon in a Sentence

trial balloon

noun
  • She's been floating trial balloons about a possible run for Congress.
  • Some of the ideas may be little more than trial balloons at this stage.
    — Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Nov. 2025
  • The white paper is a sort of trial balloon that goes public with the idea.
    — Isabella Cueto, STAT, 15 Mar. 2024
  • Call it the trial balloon that launched a thousand punctures.
    — Michael McGough Los Angeles Times (tns), Star Tribune, 3 Aug. 2020
  • Arpaio is no stranger to floating trial balloons for runs at higher office.
    — Jeremy Raff, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2017
  • But then the White House publicly struck down the trial balloon.
    — Deirdre Walsh, CNN, 18 Mar. 2018
  • No one wants to hear a trial balloon with Christmas tunes that haven’t already stood the test of time.
    — John Adamian, courant.com, 9 Dec. 2017
  • What makes this moment so revealing is that these ideas are not musings or trial balloons.
    — Veronique De Rugy, Oc Register, 22 Jan. 2026
  • Putting a toe in the water, trying something new on for size, floating a trial balloon.
    — Mark Woolsey, AJC.com, 11 Feb. 2026
  • The same would hold true if the Pads, as has been floated via trial balloon, were to embrace red, white and blue.
    — Tom Krasovic, sandiegouniontribune.com, 18 May 2018
  • Pound's trial balloon landed with a thud felt far from Ottawa, and with good reason.
    — Tim Dahlberg, Star Tribune, 28 Jan. 2021
  • Vehicles the company bet its future on are a strange place for a trial balloon.
    — Mark Phelan, Detroit Free Press, 8 Oct. 2024
  • Republishing his essay on state media can be seen as a trial balloon.
    — Anne Stevenson-Yang, Forbes, 1 Sep. 2021
  • In that way, Norwood is less a synthetic star in the making than a bellwether or a kind of trial balloon.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 2 Oct. 2025
  • These are the stories that resonate now, the innovations that feel fresh, the trial balloons for where the art form is headed.
    — Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 6 Dec. 2024
  • Both trial balloons, which were perceived as slightly desperate, were quickly shot down, and for good reason.
    — Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 15 Dec. 2017
  • The trial balloons appear in quick succession now, with a flurry going up almost every day.
    — Mike Finger, ExpressNews.com, 9 May 2020
  • So, the Lakers floated their three leading candidates for coach to the media this week as a sort of trial balloon.
    — Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2022
  • The Sutphin gates are a trial balloon in a wider campaign against fare evasion, a pet obsession of the mayor’s.
    — Clio Chang, Curbed, 7 Dec. 2023
  • That trial balloon was unveiled by Steve Sadin in a front-page News-Sun story late last month.
    — Charles Selle, Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 2026
  • That’s why trial balloons like this are being floated on the Giants’ flagship radio station.
    — Grant Brisbee, The Athletic, 12 July 2024
  • Their remarks appeared to be a trial balloon to test how much opposition a formal nomination would face.
    — Ernesto Londoño, New York Times, 12 July 2019
  • Their proposal last week read less as a change in strategic thinking and more as a trial balloon aimed at the new power brokers in Washington.
    — Brentan Alexander, Forbes, 28 Apr. 2021
  • My guess is that Netflix is using these Nike workouts as a trial balloon for future ventures into lifestyle content.
    — Time, 9 Jan. 2023
  • The reality is Leventhal’s nascent campaign is probably a trial balloon that will pop.
    — Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald, 18 Sep. 2025
  • The plan wasn’t much of a formal proposal but a trial balloon launched by then-university president Joab Thomas.
    — Michael Casagrande | [email protected], al, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Later in the call, Chapek seemed about to rule out the possibility this could be a trial balloon for future efforts but then stopped shy of making that commitment.
    — Steven Zeitchik, Washington Post, 4 Aug. 2020
  • The applicants suggested that the proposal is being presented as a trial balloon.
    — George Avalos, Mercury News, 9 Mar. 2026
  • In the media environment of an earlier generation, that sort of sotto-voce remark was a good way to float a trial balloon to insiders.
    — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2022
  • Our fears that the crackdown on gay rights was merely a trial balloon aimed to see how far Putin could go without meaningful opposition from the West have proven to be true.
    — Yelena Goltsman, Vox, 15 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'trial balloon.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: