How to Use machine-gun in a Sentence

machine-gun

1 of 2 adjective
  • The melody and Coriolanus’ calls to Lucy Gray come alive in the woods, prompting him to machine-gun the trees to stop the noise.
    EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
  • But the men on the hill were ready and laid down suppressive machine-gun fire of their own.
    Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
  • His team flew toward a farmhouse that held a machine-gun nest.
    Michael Wilson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2023
  • The bullets were clipped together in long strands for rapid, machine-gun fire.
    Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Hundreds of thousands have fled to the south, leaving a silence broken only by the pop of machine-gun fire and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks.
    Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2023
  • The darkness soon erupted with machine-gun fire, thudding bazookas and something else.
    David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • Suddenly, a German fighter plane pounced on the lumbering Liberator and tore it in half with a burst of machine-gun fire.
    Steve Straessle, Arkansas Online, 3 July 2023
  • Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
    Scott Howard-Cooper., Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2024
  • All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
    Patrick Kingsley Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2024
  • At least two Soviet MiGs — accounts of how many exactly vary — appeared suddenly and strafed the Neptune with machine-gun fire that tore into the plane and set the left engine afire.
    Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Smedley, for whom a stretch of Interstate 4 between Orange and Seminole counties is named, died in a one-man assault on an enemy machine-gun nest in Vietnam.
    Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Depending on drive mode and throttle position, the eight-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission can be machine-gun quick or comfortably relaxed.
    Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 22 Aug. 2023
  • People were trapped in the open, incinerated, asphyxiated and strafed with machine-gun fire.
    Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2024
  • The film’s fashion reputation preceded it; fans with temporary machine-gun tattoos mobbed the red carpet.
    Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2024
  • In Mexico, drug cartels have recently outfitted monster trucks with battering rams and machine-gun turrets to use in shootouts.
    Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Weber said modern inkjet printers with complicated, glitch-prone software remind him of his father’s complex machine-gun printer.
    Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 14 July 2023
  • In this portrait of a remote and insular place, the machine-gun loquaciousness of both Eli and Naomi lays bare a spectacular self-confidence, but one that’s tinged with desperation and thrives on conflict of the high school melodrama sort.
    Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 June 2023
  • The planes relentlessy pounded anti-aircraft and machine-gun positions and rocket installations.
    Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 June 2023
  • The melody and Coriolanus’ calls to Lucy Gray come alive in the woods, prompting him to machine-gun the trees to stop the noise.
    EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
  • But the men on the hill were ready and laid down suppressive machine-gun fire of their own.
    Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
  • His team flew toward a farmhouse that held a machine-gun nest.
    Michael Wilson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2023
  • The bullets were clipped together in long strands for rapid, machine-gun fire.
    Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Hundreds of thousands have fled to the south, leaving a silence broken only by the pop of machine-gun fire and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks.
    Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2023
  • The darkness soon erupted with machine-gun fire, thudding bazookas and something else.
    David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • Suddenly, a German fighter plane pounced on the lumbering Liberator and tore it in half with a burst of machine-gun fire.
    Steve Straessle, Arkansas Online, 3 July 2023
  • Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
    Scott Howard-Cooper., Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2024
  • All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
    Patrick Kingsley Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2024
  • At least two Soviet MiGs — accounts of how many exactly vary — appeared suddenly and strafed the Neptune with machine-gun fire that tore into the plane and set the left engine afire.
    Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Smedley, for whom a stretch of Interstate 4 between Orange and Seminole counties is named, died in a one-man assault on an enemy machine-gun nest in Vietnam.
    Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Depending on drive mode and throttle position, the eight-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission can be machine-gun quick or comfortably relaxed.
    Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 22 Aug. 2023
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machine gun

2 of 2 noun
  • They heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
  • The man left his machine gun in Ukraine and owed a large fine for losing it.
    Sarah A. Topol, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2024
  • The rifle uses heavy machine gun rounds and has a range of up to four miles.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 22 Sep. 2022
  • He had been issued a machine gun and was headed to the war.
    Robyn Dixon, Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2022
  • Once all the Pogues are on the lifeboat, there's a tense moment where the boat stalls, and Rafe has the chance to shoot them with a machine gun.
    Quinci Legardye, Harper's BAZAAR, 1 Aug. 2021
  • The gun in question was the notorious Thompson machine gun, and the time was the 1920s.
    Robert J. Spitzer, Time, 6 June 2023
  • Two-Face's whole role is to barge into scenes with a machine gun.
    Darren Franich, EW.com, 27 Jan. 2022
  • The enemies have the machine gun while most of us are still hurling rocks.
    Carlo Tortora Brayda, Forbes, 17 July 2023
  • There’s even a dude in a panda suit firing a machine gun!
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 6 Aug. 2021
  • It is equipped with a 30 mm gun, a machine gun and/or a grenade launcher, and can travel up to 60 miles per hour.
    Arkansas Online, 19 Jan. 2023
  • The logo depicts a big bee in a sailor cap holding a hammer, a wrench, and a machine gun.
    Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 13 July 2023
  • Another soldier in the unit, 57-year-old Zil, ripped a machine gun out of the hands of a Russian corpse.
    Kamila Hrabchuk, Washington Post, 13 Oct. 2022
  • The sounds of machine gun fire punctuated the pair’s race to safety.
    Carolyn Hagler, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Sep. 2023
  • The Merkava, the Namer and the Puma all have 7.62 caliber machine guns, Butterworth said.
    Cate Brown, Washington Post, 16 Apr. 2024
  • The Palestinians come in and gun down 20 civilians with a machine gun.
    Jarrett Bell, USA TODAY, 10 Sep. 2021
  • In 2022, Russians came knocking on the door with their machine guns, looking for Nazis.
    Krista Stevens, Longreads, 18 Sep. 2023
  • Note the machine gun attached to one of the bicycles at lower right.
    Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, 17 Apr. 2024
  • Indeed, Browning wasn’t even the first to produce a rapid-fire machine gun.
    Mark Yost, WSJ, 14 May 2021
  • At age thirteen my father was awoken by machine gun fire in the streets of Madrid.
    Sebastian Junger, Time, 19 May 2021
  • After the four gunners before him had been shot in the face, Andrews was ordered to take over the machine gun.
    Fox News, 11 Nov. 2022
  • When placed on the back of a gun, the small, simple devices can change a handgun into a mini-machine gun.
    CBS News, 8 June 2022
  • His plane was once struck by fire from a Soviet-era heavy machine gun in Afghanistan.
    Jessica Donati, WSJ, 11 Sep. 2022
  • The agents gave him a cardboard box containing an M-60 machine gun in three pieces.
    Kevin Krause, Dallas News, 31 July 2023
  • There’s a scene where Chris is on top of a train shooting machine guns at helicopters.
    Vulture, 20 June 2023
  • An hour later, Bernier was above deck on the topsail of the submarine with an M-60 machine gun.
    BostonGlobe.com, 10 Sep. 2021
  • Armed with four machine guns, five of the men climbed a hill and took positions overlooking the base and the antenna.
    Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
  • The state banned bump stocks, which can turn an assault rifle into a machine gun.
    Brittany Wallman, sun-sentinel.com, 3 Apr. 2022
  • The occupant of the house was arrested and charged with possession of a machine gun.
    Scott Glover and Curt Devine, CNN, 30 Aug. 2022
  • Then, in June, the justices ruled, 6-3, that bump stocks can’t be regulated as machine guns.
    Noah Feldman, The Mercury News, 15 Oct. 2024
  • Officers arrested Routh in December 2002 after the standoff and found him with a fully automatic machine gun, according to a report from the News and Record at the time.
    Jack Birle, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 16 Sep. 2024

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