How to Use mercenary in a Sentence

mercenary

1 of 2 noun

• The first is a deeper dive into the world of the mercenary.
  — Rob Wieland, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
• The Boss takes a job with a local mercenary-for-hire group to make ends meet, and the roommates do odd jobs for the local gangs.
  — Sarah Leboeuf, Ars Technica, 21 July 2022
• Most of the mercenaries were soon captured, though three were killed in a firefight.
  — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 17 July 2023
• That leaves open the question of who will lead his brutal band of mercenaries.
  — Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY, 24 June 2023
• Putin’s mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin had launched a mutiny.
  — Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2023
• Who, it should be mentioned, is also after the M.I.A. item and has his own band of mercenaries to back him up.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 3 Mar. 2023
• In general, his story is that he is killed while on a job as a mercenary and revived by Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon.
  — Los Angeles Times, 30 Mar. 2022
• But that alliance didn't keep it from being razed by papal mercenaries, and by 1400, the monastery was all but abandoned.
  — Elizabeth Heath, Travel + Leisure, 25 Jan. 2024
• Late in the season, Frank Grillo plays a badass mercenary who teaches the fictionalized Paul how to shoot, fight, etc.
  — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 28 Dec. 2022
• The Norfolk officers, Catherine and Lamar, are noble go-to-ground types — in contrast to the mercenaries ruled by greed.
  — Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2023
• And the continent has proved a strong market for Russian weapons and mercenaries.
  — Paul Sonne, BostonGlobe.com, 26 July 2023
• The mercenaries were offered a choice to retire from the service, move to Belarus or sign new contracts with the Defense Ministry.
  — Yuras Karmanau The Associated Press, Arkansas Online, 30 Sep. 2023
• Rather than a defeat for Madrid, Mbappé’s decision has been cast as that of a mercenary and a traitor, a turncoat who gave his word to Pérez and then betrayed him.
  — New York Times, 27 May 2022
• Since the fall of 2022, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and mercenaries have been killed or wounded attempting to capture the city.
  — Sébastien Roblin, Popular Mechanics, 23 Feb. 2023
• Its dictator of three decades, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have helped avert a recent mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group last month.
  — Patrick Smith, NBC News, 10 July 2023
• Some people will perceive you as a traitor or mercenary for leaving for a bigger payday.
  — Jack Kelly, Forbes, 29 Dec. 2022
• The spectral mercenary proved enough of a hit with fans that Marvel kept bringing him back for guest appearances and backup stories.
  — Rob Salkowitz, Forbes, 15 Apr. 2022
• Because mercenaries with some equipment and weapons were very close to Moscow.
  — ABC News, 9 July 2023
• The Russian military’s reliance on the mercenaries who made up the Wagner Group was key.
  — Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times, 13 July 2023
• Gary Motsek, then a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, was alarmed by the emergence of what seemed to be a new breed of Russian mercenary.
  — Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, 30 May 2022
• Ilyas was kidnapped as a child by an African mercenary and eventually sent to a German mission school.
  — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2022
• For a quick run-down: Moon Knight is actually a former mercenary named Marc Spector.
  — Milan Polk, Men's Health, 30 Mar. 2022
• Russian forces led by mercenaries from the Wagner Group captured Bakhmut in May.
  — Samya Kullab, Anchorage Daily News, 15 Sep. 2023
• Nearly half of the soldiers who were killed were mercenaries, officials said.
  — Mike Brest, Washington Examiner, 5 May 2023
• In some cases, children are sent out of Syria to fight as mercenaries in other conflicts.
  — Hogir Abdo and Abby Sewell, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 June 2023
• Russia said he would be exiled to Belarus and his mercenaries would be moved under the military.
  — Phil McCausland, NBC News, 27 June 2023
• The Kremlin on Monday for the first time revealed that such a meeting had taken place, stressing that the mercenaries pledged allegiance to the Russian leader.
  — Yuliya Talmazan, NBC News, 14 July 2023
• Damon played a European mercenary who is forced to team up with imperial Chinese forces to fend off an alien threat.
  — Zack Sharf, Variety, 12 July 2023
• Russia has used convicts and mercenaries to wear down Ukraine in the fight for Bakhmut, stretching Kyiv’s exhausted, battered soldiers to the limit.
  — Yurii Shyvala, New York Times, 8 Apr. 2023
• The Kremlin reeled from the weekend mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner private army of prison recruits and other mercenaries.
  — Hanna Arhirova, ajc, 29 June 2023

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mercenary

2 of 2 adjective

• His motives in choosing a career were purely mercenary.
• Members of the mercenary group played a major role in Russia’s fight for the city in eastern Ukraine.
  — Claire Parker, Washington Post, 2 June 2023
• The mercenary group has forces stationed across the border in eastern Libya.
  — WIRED, 22 Sep. 2023
• The recent mutiny launched by the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin suggests that the war may destabilize Putin’s rule at home.
  — Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson, Foreign Affairs, 7 July 2023
• In the game, a mercenary outlaw named V is on the search for a one-of-a-kind implant that doubles as a key to immortality.
  — Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Oct. 2023
• The art world is a mercenary place where grudges often give way to expedience.
  — Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 24 July 2023
• Putin unleashed a mercenary force, the Wagner Group, which used convicts to try to take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
  — Doyle McManuswashington Columnist, Los Angeles Times, 15 Jan. 2023
• Prigozhin has publicly accused Shoigu of trying to destroy the mercenary group.
  — Mary Ilyushina, Washington Post, 27 June 2023
• Over the space of several days, a South African mercenary group evacuated some of them.
  — Ghazi Balkiz, CNN, 10 Oct. 2022
• The mercenary leader may also have gone to Moscow, the president said.
  — Bloomberg, Fortune, 6 July 2023
• Joe Russo wrote the script after penning the first film, which starred Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, a mercenary grieving hte death of his son who finds a chance at redemption.
  — Aaron Couch, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Sep. 2022
• After the death of Russia’s Wagner chief, what happens to his mercenary army?
  — Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2023
• Many of their clients don’t need a mercenary complainer so much as some basic instruction in how to complain.
  — Steve Hendrix, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Dec. 2022
• Based on Assayas’ 1996 film of the same name, this eight-episode series for HBO is about the galactic highs and sub-basement lows of being a creative person in a mercenary world.
  — San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Aug. 2022
• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, staged a mutiny, calling into question Putin’s grip on Russia.
  — Samuel Charap, Foreign Affairs, 13 July 2023
• By the time the Russians took Bakhmut, their forces were exhausted, and the Wagner mercenary group that led the fight was in open rebellion against the Russian ministry of defense.
  — Josh Holder, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2024
• But Glazer is more interested in Nazi-ism as a mercenary act.
  — Jada Yuan, Washington Post, 18 Sep. 2023
• The mercenary army chief was headed home to St. Petersburg with nine others onboard.
  — Alan Cullison, WSJ, 22 Dec. 2023
• However, other countries have turned to the Russian mercenary force known as Wagner, which has been on the front lines of the war in Ukraine but also has a presence in Africa.
  — Chris Megerian and Sam Mednick, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Mar. 2023
• By now, Marsalek had fully entrenched himself in the affairs of his Russian mercenary friend, Stanislav Petlinsky.
  — Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2023
• Wagner mercenary group fighters in a photo said to be in Soledar and released Wednesday.
  — Patrick Smith, NBC News, 13 Jan. 2023
• In January, not far from here, a man claiming to be a defector from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group ran across a frozen river in the dead of the polar night.
  — Emily Rauhala, Anchorage Daily News, 18 July 2023
• Anderson didn’t want to sound mercenary or, worse, cheerful.
  — Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 16 Sep. 2022
• Within hours of the second coup, the head of Russia’s shadowy mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, was among the first to congratulate the new junta leader.
  — Farai Mutsaka, ajc, 16 Dec. 2022
• Meanwhile, Russia's Wagner mercenary group has moved into the country, flaunting shipments of weapons the same day French troops left the country.
  — Anders Hagstrom, Fox News, 11 Sep. 2022
• Early on, he was recorded recruiting prisoners to accept contracts with his mercenary force to fight on the front lines.
  — Noah Robertson, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 June 2023
• The song plays throughout the trailer as John Wick proceeds to do, well, John Wick things — shooting, stabbing, and punching his way through an endless barrage of mercenary killers and crime bosses.
  — Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 16 Feb. 2023
• The mercenary leader has a track record of misleading statements and did not provide evidence for his statements.
  — Josh Pennington, CNN, 30 Apr. 2023
• As things stand now, a genocidal militia group backed by Russia’s Wagner (mercenary) group is on the march to defeat Sudan’s army.
  — Paul Tilsley, Fox News, 26 Nov. 2023
• Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, has threatened to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut, which would leave the city vulnerable.
  — Siobhán O'Grady, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Laris Karklis, Samuel Granados, The Washington Post, Anchorage Daily News, 7 May 2023

Last Updated: 3 May 2024