as in aggressive
feeling or displaying eagerness to fight
the player became quite belligerent and was thrown out of the game
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in combatant
Related Words
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of belligerent
Taylor Seely, AZCentral.com, 21 Aug. 2025
Social deficits can manifest as belligerent or meek.
—Tao Lin, Harpers Magazine, 20 Aug. 2025
Concluding that Flanagan isn’t going to leave on her own, police put the belligerent prosecutor in handcuffs.
—Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News, 19 Aug. 2025
This arouses the ire of the town’s belligerent sheriff (Colin Hanks, playing against type) and crooked theme park owner (John Ortiz) who decide to get revenge on the apparent family man causing them trouble.
—Frank Scheck, HollywoodReporter, 13 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for belligerent
Noun
Abram told The Arizona Republic that Merrill was belligerent and had shoved him the day before.
—Recent Examples of Synonyms for belligerent
Adjective
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Cynics may not believe the aggressive talk from the company.—
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And the Buckeyes are working through some kinks in an offense that turns from conservative to aggressive in random segments of the game.—
Noun
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Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified by TIME.—
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Encounters require both navigating the space with the trainer to avoid getting knocked out and issuing commands to your own combatants to win the fight.—
Adjective
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And as increasingly militant voices in our culture have joined the ranks, the environment has become even more intolerant.—
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In the story, Raina is a young Bulgarian woman who must choose between her militant fiancé, Sergius, and the kind, war-weary soldier Bluntschli, who has sought out refuge in her bedroom.—
Noun
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Legal experts and other observers of the office said state attorneys general traditionally didn’t act primarily as partisan warriors.—
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Here, on our visit in in June 2024, the silence and emptiness of the place allow the imagination to wander — bringing those warriors back to life and allowing visualization of their mock battles in a place that has changed so little over time.—
Adjective
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Students from the kingdom are increasingly turning away from US universities in particular, put off by a mix of hostile immigration policies, concerns over gun violence, and the kingdom’s own push to grow its domestic education sector.—
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The move to social media and algorithmic media was really a move toward a style of political communication that is somewhat hostile to the liberal project and the deliberative, open-minded, thoughtful, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand mode of discourse that Obama is good at.—
Noun
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Fighting on the island had stopped, so the soldiers in the picture were not under fire, and the action of raising the flag (there is a movie of it) took all of a few seconds.—
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Another nearby point of interest for history buffs is Historic Blenheim and Civil War Interpretive Center, a Greek Revival-style house dating to 1859 that preserves signatures and pictographs from Federal soldiers who once lived there.—
Noun
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An outspoken proponent of armed revolution in the United States, Shakur was convicted for her role in a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed a state trooper.—
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The operation will also include 300 troopers from the Tennessee Highway Patrol.—
Noun
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Unverified image of a Russian serviceman holding a Ukrainian Baba Yaga drone on August 6, 2024.—
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The home had been loaned to the federal government's United Service Organization (U.S.O.) to serve as a hub of entertainment for the servicemen and women who were training at the nearby U.S. Naval Air Station Grosse Ile, which operated from 1927-1969 as a flight-training base.—
Cite this Entry
“Belligerent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/belligerent. Accessed 1 Oct. 2025.
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