How to Use truncheon in a Sentence

truncheon

noun
  • Some were hung on the wall and beaten with electrified truncheons.
    David Stavrou, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2020
  • Some donned goggles to guard against pepper spray and helmets to protect from truncheons.
    The Economist, 30 June 2019
  • Russian police beat some protesters to the ground with wide truncheon swings while others tried to push the police away.
    Jim Heintz, chicagotribune.com, 28 July 2019
  • Seconds later, a state trooper brought a truncheon down on Lewis, fracturing his skull.
    David Remnick, The New Yorker, 30 Dec. 2019
  • One is lined with corporate PR speak, the other with police truncheons.
    WIRED, 22 Sep. 2023
  • Visitors are asked to pick up a truncheon (a stick carried as a weapon by police officers) to learn what happened next.
    Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Visitors are asked to pick up a truncheon (a thick stick carried as a weapon by police officers) to learn what happened next.
    Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 28 Apr. 2021
  • Student Sasha Vilks showed a reporter his legs and his back deeply bruised from truncheon blows, but told his weeping mother not to look.
    Yuras Karmanau, Star Tribune, 15 Aug. 2020
  • Hundreds of people crowded the runway to greet Ali, pushing against a cordon of soldiers armed with truncheons.
    Vann R. Newkirk Ii, The Atlantic, 16 Sep. 2025
  • National forces in riot gear began charging into schools as soon as the polls opened, clearing crowds with truncheons and rubber bullets.
    Ellen Barry, New York Times, 1 Oct. 2017
  • The black truncheon attached to their ears became hitched to its associated discourtesy.
    Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 12 June 2018
  • Two officers carrying truncheons run after a protester, who appears to fall, his glasses caught by the camera in midair.
    Alejandro Chacoff, The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2023
  • The protesters were facing off against countless blue-helmeted Alabama state troops armed with whips and truncheons.
    David Remnick, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2017
  • The baton that Reagan passed to a new generation became a truncheon in Gingrich’s hands.
    Christopher Buckley, Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2022
  • Just the day before, Macedonian security forces had used shields and truncheons to beat back hundreds of refugees, and then strung barbed wire across the border.
    Ali Arkady, Smithsonian, 29 Apr. 2017
  • Just the day before, Macedonian security forces had used shields and truncheons to beat back hundreds of refugees, and then strung barbed wire across the border.
    Ali Arkady, Smithsonian, 2 May 2017
  • Video footage showed truncheon-wielding riot officers squirting pepper spray at a man in a group of journalists and ganging up to beat and manhandle him.
    Washington Post, 16 Dec. 2019
  • Colleagues in riot gear and on horseback, plus truncheon-wielding National Guard units, lined nearby roads.
    James Ellingworth, The Seattle Times, 15 June 2017
  • Soon after the largest march, on June 15, the police and the Basij militia came out in force, spraying tear gas and beating people with truncheons.
    Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 24 May 2017
  • Television cameras and social media accounts showed officers stomping on voters with their boots, pounding them with truncheons and dragging them out of polling places.
    Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 7 Oct. 2017
  • Across the country, Indigenous communities and their allies were blocking roads and facing down the tear gas canisters and truncheon blows of army and police units.
    Alexander Zaitchik, The New Republic, 24 Oct. 2022
  • But the fact that so many Iranians in so many different places are willing to brave the bullets and the truncheons of their oppressors speaks volumes about their frustration and anger at the state of their country.
    Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, 7 Jan. 2018
  • If the Second Amendment is not limited to firearms, Monday’s ruling also calls into question state-level bans on weapons like truncheons, saps, billy clubs, nunchucks, and the like.
    Matt Ford, The New Republic, 9 Aug. 2023
  • After escorting women in medieval dresses into a tent, a gaggle of knights braced in an impromptu phalanx, their wooden shields forming a wall, as riot police armed with truncheons pushed forward against opposition protesters.
    Andrew Roth, Washington Post, 13 June 2017
  • Each week this past month, videos filtered out on social media of Russian police battering unarmed and peaceful demonstrators with truncheons — no matter the scenes being ignored on Russian state television.
    Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 12 Aug. 2019
  • Not far from where those spokesmen congregate is another image, that of thousands of Afghans running a chaotic gantlet of dangers, including truncheon-wielding Taliban fighters, to make their way to the airport and escape the country.
    Los Angeles Times, 22 Aug. 2021
  • For the Civil Rights Movement, Alabama troopers lifting truncheons to beat marchers crossing Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge.
    Susan Page, USA Today, 29 Aug. 2025

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