How to Use vicious in a Sentence

vicious

adjective
  • I know you're upset with her, but there's no need to be vicious.
  • As fire blazes around them, the two trade vicious blows.
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Regime change isn’t a dirty word when the regime is among the most vicious in the world.
    — Garry Kasparov, The Atlantic, 10 Jan. 2026
  • That's when the threats against her became even more vicious.
    — Erin Moriarty, CBS News, 25 Aug. 2021
  • The boos were booming and vicious.
    — Tim Spiers, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2025
  • This is a vicious cycle that has been going on for far too long.
    — Gabe Friedman, sun-sentinel.com, 12 May 2021
  • Was Brady aware of how vicious his roast was going to get?
    — Frank Digiacomo, Billboard, 15 Aug. 2025
  • There was a vicious cycle of not working out and then putting on weight.
    — David Sharos, chicagotribune.com, 1 Mar. 2022
  • There are very few hints in art of dogs being dirty, vicious or rabid.
    — Literary Hub, 10 June 2026
  • Mayhem is the stock and trade of this vicious cycle.
    — Laura Washington, Chicago Tribune, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Fire experts say this leads to a vicious cycle.
    — Lauren Sommer, NPR, 4 May 2026
  • The joke, though, is that the consumer world is every bit as vicious.
    — Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 10 Mar. 2026
  • And not just killed him but tore him apart in the way that Gilead taught her to be vicious.
    — Lauren Huff, EW.com, 16 June 2021
  • She had been murdered in a vicious attack.
    — Dateline Nbc, NBC news, 22 Oct. 2025
  • Everyone is fair game for her vicious tongue.
    — R. Eric Thomas, Chicago Tribune, 13 Feb. 2026
  • The payments set a vicious cycle that shows no signs of slowing.
    — Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2023
  • That top line is vicious, but the Huskies need not always rely on them.
    — Kat Cornetta, BostonGlobe.com, 13 Feb. 2023
  • Shamet caught the ball and hammered it in off two steps over Hayes for the vicious and-one play.
    — Dana Scott, The Arizona Republic, 22 Apr. 2022
  • The public face of the pro-life movement looks at the moment loony and vicious.
    — Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 4 Aug. 2022
  • This is where the vicious cycle connecting drought to heat kicks in.
    — Mark Gongloff, Mercury News, 17 Jan. 2026
  • One end had been sharpened to a vicious point; the other was a forked hammer claw.
    — Josh Ireland, Harpers Magazine, 24 Feb. 2026
  • The move may have been for the best, as the vicious battle was just getting started.
    — Taijuan Moorman, USA TODAY, 10 Oct. 2024
  • But as the demonstrations have worn on, the junta has grown more vicious.
    — The Economist, 6 Mar. 2021
  • On the flight the plane encounters a vicious storm, tears apart and crashes.
    — Pete Hammond, Deadline, 26 Jan. 2026
  • This vicious machine chewed him up and spit him out in predictable fashion.
    — Zach Dean Outkick, FOXNews.com, 1 July 2026
  • Panas then returned to the estate as a scrawny one-eyed chicken, bald and vicious.
    — Rachel Polonsky, The New York Review of Books, 11 May 2021
  • The worry with a dog like Chey is the fact they could be locked in a vicious cycle.
    — Jack Beresford, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 Oct. 2025
  • The segment was perhaps even more vicious than last week's mic session.
    — Brian Mazique, Forbes.com, 3 Jan. 2026
  • These shortcomings despite the fact that heat is a vicious killer.
    — Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times, 27 June 2024
  • In the wake of the vicious attack, a huge pool of blood was left trailing outside the store.
    — Nicholas Williams, New York Daily News, 16 July 2025

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