How to Use strongman in a Sentence

strongman

noun
  • Too often, tyrants believe in the myth of the strongman.
    Daniel Twining, WSJ, 6 May 2022
  • And, of course, the strongman isn’t one to play a supporting role.
    William Pesek, Forbes, 2 Sep. 2021
  • The strength of a civic government was no match for a strongman.
    Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2023
  • Last but not least among the tools of the strongman is corruption.
    Federico Finchelstein, The New Republic, 3 Nov. 2020
  • In the 2000s, the rise of a strongman — Putin — in the Kremlin was seen in pragmatic terms in Austria.
    Souad Mekhennet, Washington Post, 5 July 2022
  • Hifter, the strongman of the east Libya government, based in Benghazi.
    Samy Magdy, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Sep. 2023
  • Both were sent to the strongman’s religious court and sentenced to death.
    Anand Gopal, The New Yorker, 6 Sep. 2021
  • It’s a father figure, a strongman figure that attracts all of the orphan souls of the world.
    John Benson, cleveland, 10 Dec. 2022
  • In Cambodia, Hun Sen, the strongman, has ruled since 1985.
    Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 17 Dec. 2020
  • The strongman praised the martial law era and in some ways emulated it with his bloody six-year war on drugs.
    Michael E. Miller and Regine Cabato, Anchorage Daily News, 20 June 2022
  • More Republicans are adopting the kind of strongman rhetoric that seemed to play so well for Trump.
    Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 16 Oct. 2022
  • Many in the Philippines and Indonesia, for better or for worse, love a strongman.
    The Economist, 29 Aug. 2020
  • But the pandemic has also scrambled the plans of those same strongmen.
    Declan Walsh, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2020
  • Venezuela’s strongman Nicolás Maduro uses the lingo of the American Left, which begins to sound like him.
    Mike Gonzalez, National Review, 18 June 2022
  • Molly — with her big eyes and modest dreams — and the way Ron Perlman’s strongman Bruno protects her.
    Peter Debruge, Variety, 2 Dec. 2021
  • This strongman rhetoric hides the fact that the whole declaration was a performance.
    CNN, 25 Aug. 2022
  • But the current strongman, General Sisi, has pushed the country down to a new level.
    Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 17 Dec. 2020
  • In a 2008 election, Mohamed Nasheed toppled the longtime strongman ruler of the Maldives.
    Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2021
  • But the provincial strongman has been in the crosshairs several times before.
    Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes, 28 Dec. 2022
  • Sean Penn, that excellent actor, was a friend and backer of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan strongman.
    Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 2 May 2022
  • Yet the virus also brings potential perils for the strongmen.
    Declan Walsh, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2020
  • This mistrust, which also applies to the electoral process, could play into the hands of a strongman like Mr. Bolsonaro.
    Ana Ionova, The Christian Science Monitor, 30 Aug. 2021
  • After the ouster of Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi in 2011, the country has been wracked by successive waves of civil war.
    Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2020
  • Spider Tack, a super sticky substance used by strongman competitors, is the current rage and is in the league's cross hairs.
    Star Tribune, 21 June 2021
  • Stoltman's older brother, Luke Stoltman, who is a strongman as well, encouraged him to go to the gym.
    Natasha Dye, PEOPLE.com, 5 July 2022
  • So he was appalled when the strongman’s son emerged as the front-runner for president earlier this year.
    Michael E. Miller and Regine Cabato, Anchorage Daily News, 20 June 2022
  • Breaking the rules, and getting away with it, is at the center of the ethos of macho lawlessness that underpins strongman rule.
    Ruth Ben-Ghiat, The New York Review of Books, 12 Aug. 2020
  • The militaries of successful strongmen are often drawn from the region or ethnic group that has strong ties to the leader.
    Angele Latham, USA TODAY, 5 Jan. 2024
  • These strongmen can show a thing or two Summers: That's incredible.
    Tyler Bartlam, NPR, 3 Sep. 2024
  • The trend toward rewarding strongmen continued with the election of Prabowo Subianto to the Indonesian presidency.
    Francis Fukuyama, Foreign Affairs, 4 Sep. 2024

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