How to Use take up arms in a Sentence

take up arms

idiom
  • Abiy has urged citizens to take up arms and fight the Tigrayan forces.
    Eliza MacKintosh, CNN, 5 Nov. 2021
  • No one here’s being asked to take up arms to defend it.
    Laura Jedeed, The New Republic, 26 Feb. 2022
  • But, with the very future of Middle-earth at stake, how could anyone not take up arms?
    Marisa Lascala, Good Housekeeping, 28 Jan. 2022
  • Some Ukrainian men were heading back into Ukraine from Poland to take up arms against the Russian forces.
    Vanessa Gera, Adam Pemble, Anchorage Daily News, 27 Feb. 2022
  • While many civilians have fled the chaos, others have remained to take up arms and defend their city and country.
    Nick Stoico, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Feb. 2022
  • Hundreds of Shiite men eager to take up arms against the Taliban flocked to his new resistance militia in the spring.
    New York Times, 18 Aug. 2022
  • In and around Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, vigilante killings are on the rise as residents take up arms against the gangs that control up to 80 percent of the city.
    Catherine Garcia, The Week, 2 May 2023
  • Belarusians are among the foreign fighters who have volunteered to take up arms in Ukraine against Russian forces.
    Fox News, 22 May 2022
  • As Deng grew up and the fighting continued, younger and younger relatives were called to take up arms, including her 7-year-old uncle.
    Caitlin Dickerson, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2022
  • At least hundreds of foreign fighters, including Americans, have traveled to Ukraine over the months to take up arms in support of the country.
    Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2022
  • In Pan Killay, elders encouraged their sons to take up arms to protect the village, and some reached out to former Taliban members.
    Anand Gopal, The New Yorker, 6 Sep. 2021
  • Cut to images of Zelensky (born 1978) in his trademark olive garb, urging the citizens of Ukraine to take up arms against an invasion.
    Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2022
  • Stepan and Maxim also didn’t want to take up arms for another reason: Maxim’s parents supported the Russian side, so did Stepan’s brother.
    J. Lester Feder, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2022
  • In any war, the abstract or ideological reasons that lead someone to take up arms often dissolve in the highly personal crucible of combat, which produces its own logic.
    Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker, 26 Dec. 2022
  • That last box clearly hinted that true believers in liberty might have to take up arms if the voter fraud (for which there was no evidence) produced an unfavorable result (in advance of the results actually being tabulated).
    Rex Huppke, chicagotribune.com, 15 Sep. 2021
  • Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Ganna Malyar, urged the country’s citizens to take up arms, including by manufacturing molotov cocktails or small arms, as Russia’s invasion entered its second day.
    Washington Post, 25 Feb. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'take up arms.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: