Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use wrestle in a sentence

33 example sentences · verb, noun

Wrestle means to take part in (a wrestling bout or match). Example: “I couldn't wrestle the trunk down the hall.”

Examples of wrestle by meaning

verbTo move or manipulate (something) using physical effort, usually with some difficulty or opposition.

  • I couldn't wrestle the trunk down the hall.
  • Federal Reserve officials raised interest rates to their highest level in 22 years and left the door open to further action as they continued their 16-month campaign to wrestle inflation lower by cooling the American economy.2023 July 26, Jeanna Smialek, “Fed raises rates after a pause and leaves door open to more”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New...

More sentences with wrestle

  • The pair grappled and they wrestled before Madueke went down and Mendes fell on top of him.2026 May 30, David Hytner, “Paris Saint-Germain retain Champions League as Arsenal dream dashed in shootout”, in The Guardian, archived…. From the entry flick on the afterburners
  • In my day, if you filled out your shirt, people assumed you played football or wrestled.2006 — Larry Scott (interview), Iron Man 65(5): 258. From the entry bodybuilding
  • Each day, thousands of employees throughout corporate California wrestle with whether to come out of the closet.1993 May 17, Denise Hamilton, “WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Gays Confront 'Lavender Ceiling'”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los…. From the entry lavender ceiling
  • Sekitoris wrestle every one of the 15 days of a basho.1977, Larry Winderbaum, “Sekitori”, in The Martial Arts Encyclopedia, Washington, D.C.: INSCAPE, →ISBN, page 143, column 1. From the entry sekitori
  • And at last, as they wrestled and whapped together, they fell headlong in the stream.1902, Henry Van Dyke, “The Mill”, in The Blue Flower, New York: Scribner, page 65. From the entry whap
  • But Dave agreed to participate in the Bulgarian dual, and that trapped me into having to wrestle, too.2014 November 18, Mark Schultz, David Thomas, Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for…. From the entry dual
  • I wrestle Hugo around a bit on the ground, tousling his mane some to add authentic boy-dog joshiness.2014 November 25, Chris Lynch, Cyberia (Cyberia, Book 1), Scholastic Inc., →ISBN. From the entry joshiness
  • Nobody came on to the movie camera—wrapped it in a bear hug and wrestled it to submission—like Betty Hutton.2007 March 31, Richard Corliss, “When Betty Got Frank”, in Time, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2010. From the entry indomitable
  • Most writers merely produce effete works on paper, you might say, but Kerouac went and wrestled with the tree itself.2007 August 19, Luc Sante, “On the Road Again”, in New York Times. From the entry effete
  • Is Raven ever going to wrestle on TV?2005 November 5, Poot Rootbeer, “Poot's post on TNA iMPACT! primetime, 11/3/05”, in rec.sport.pro-wrestling (Usenet). From the entry get to the fireworks factory
  • There is nothing more flustering than to wrestle with an unfamiliar piece of equipment in the presence of a class!2004, Geoffrey Petty, Teaching Today: A Practical Guide, page 361. From the entry flustering
  • Wolfensberger wrestles with and writes about are not intellectual discussions of angels dancing on the head of a pin.2001, William C. Gaventa, David L. Coulter, The Theological Voice of Wolf Wolfensberger, page 6. From the entry angels dancing on the head of a pin
  • Sadie wrestled with the door's defective lock, saying disparagingly, "You seem to be making the running with doctors these days.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 91. From the entry disparagingly
  • Those whose nature it is to be rational will instinctively ask why and wherefore, and wrestle with themselves for an answer.1922, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “First Steps in Education”, in Fantasia of the Unconscious, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, pages…. From the entry Tom, Dick and Harry
  • I shall wrestle for life, foe against foe.1919, Donald Alexander Mackenzie, The World's Heritage of Epical, Heroic and Romantic Literature, page 12. From the entry nikker
  • Two other children play about her, and alongside the husband's strong, vigorous figure wrestles with his refractory horse.1904, The Pall Mall Magazine, volume 33, page 150. From the entry pastellic
  • She wrestled with her own Africanness.2019, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, “Manchester Happened”, in Manchester Happened, Oneworld Publications (2020), page 73. From the entry Africanness
  • We've all seen those ridiculous photographs of King Vladimir, the bare-chested tough hero who wrestles with animals, dives in submarines, and practices judo.2015, Srđa Popović, Matthew Miller, chapter V, in Blueprint for Revolution, New York: Spiegel & Grau. From the entry chested
  • When will we stop the political mud wrestling and begin to wrestle with the most potentially destructive force ever to challenge this Nation?2002 November 15–December 16, Congressional Record, volume 148, Part 17, page 23051. From the entry mud wrestling
  • Both my arms are pinioned from behind by the Director of Comp., who wrestles me roughly down, on me with all his weight.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 12. From the entry pinion
  • The other areas and the outlyings will have to come in at a later date, although the council wrestles with that periodically.1975, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Public Works. Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, Water Pollution Control Act of…. From the entry outlying
  • Audubon and City parks offered picnic grounds resplendent with giant trees, brilliant flowers, and cool grass where we could roll and wrestle and "tumbleset."1965, Louisiana History, page 189. From the entry tumbleset
  • "'I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig,' Ching likes to say, 'You get dirty and besides the pig likes it.'"1950, Time, volume 56. From the entry wrestle with a pig
  • Then there was the noble but unseen army of perspiring heroes who wrestled with furniture and wings and other flapdoodles behind the curtain.1929, Lisgar Collegiate Institute, Vox Lycei 1928-1929, page 43. From the entry flapdoodle
  • If in the loneliness of his studio he wrestled desperately with the Angel of the Lord he never allowed a soul to divine his anguish.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 43”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC. From the entry divine
  • She wrestled out of her shirt, and put the long john top over her own torn one, the shirt back on, the blue sweater that smelled pungently of Winona.2013, John Keeble, “The Killer”, in The Shadows of Owls: A Novel, Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, →ISBN, page 316. From the entry long john
  • But their lead lasted just 10 minutes before Roman Pavlyuchenko and Jermain Defoe both headed home in the space of two minutes to wrestle back control.2011 September 29, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3-1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport. From the entry space
  • There are old-school wrestlers, submission wrestlers, hardcore wrestlers, hillbilly wrestlers, masked Mexican lucha libre wrestlers, shoot wrestlers, and wrestlers who just talk a lot and never actually wrestle.2006, Thomas Hackett, Slaphappy: Pride, Prejudice, and Professional Wrestling, New York, NY: HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 21. From the entry tweener
  • As the Party wrestled with the corruption issue, it continued to harass its critics, most especially a new breed of political activist – the cyber dissident.2006, Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia, →ISBN. From the entry cyber dissident
  • There had been a time in high school, see, when I wrestled with the possibility that I might be gay, a torturous six-month culmination of years of unpopularity and girllessness.2012, Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. From the entry girllessness
  • He required his contestants to do vile, vulgar things like munch bananas and wrestle with potbellied men (talent?), then line up in the briefest of briefies and answer suggestive questions.1992 September 16, Michael Kilian, “Here’s a talent that eludes any future Miss anything: Political correctness”, in Chicago Tribune. From the entry briefies

Meaning of wrestle

  1. verb To take part in (a wrestling bout or match).
  2. verb Sometimes followed by down: to contend with or move (someone) into or out of a position by grappling; also, to overcome (someone) by grappling.
  3. verb To move or manipulate (something) using physical effort, usually with some difficulty or opposition.

Full definition of wrestle

Questions about wrestle in a sentence

How do you use wrestle in a sentence?
Wrestle is used as a verb and noun. For example: “I couldn't wrestle the trunk down the hall.”
What is a short sentence with wrestle?
“She wrestled with her own Africanness.”
What does wrestle mean?
Wrestle means to take part in (a wrestling bout or match).

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wrestle (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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