Sample Sentences for

mercenary

grouped by contextual meaning

(editor-reviewed)

Maybe passersby would think he was a member of the French Foreign Legion or some heroic mercenary.  (source) John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, 2012

He even considered working as a mercenary bombardier in an attempted coup in a small Caribbean country, and was still thinking it over when the coup was called off.  (source) Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken, 2010

On either side of him stood two armed security guys, some of the mortal mercenaries I'd seen in D.C.  (source) Rick Riordan, The Titan's Curse, 2007

The armies of the French have thus become mixed, partly mercenary and partly national,  (source) Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to...  (source) Thomas Jefferson et al., The Declaration of Independence, 1776

Moise Tshombe has Belgians and mercenary soldiers working for him.†  (source) Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, 1998

One of the mercenaries we knocked over was trying to get this blade from our dead Fremen friend.†  (source) Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965

Besides, Day wasn't a mercenary in any of his past crimes.†  (source) Marie Lu, Legend, 2011

Plenty of Martials roam the south as merchants, mercenaries, and craftsmen.†  (source) Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes, 2015

She could have stepped in front of a truck, drowned in a puddle, been seized by a mercenary with foulness on his mind.†  (source) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014

Maybe that's what the Silencers are: human mercenaries.†  (source) Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave, 2013

Mercenary marriage, if ever I saw one.†  (source) Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013

The three mercenaries looked ready to boil someone alive, and then there were the two shackled murderers.†  (source) Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass, 2012

I hate to be so mercenary, but the price of flour has gone up too.  (source) Alan Gratz, Prisoner B-3087, 2013

I figure to myself that the task of attending on your sickbed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse, who could never guess your wishes nor minister to them with the care and affection of your poor cousin.  (source) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1831

But I do not approve of mercenary marriages.  (source) Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1905

She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage, places her disappointment not to faults of judgment, or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being, after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway, and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious,  (source) Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage, places her disappointment not to faults of judgment, or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being, after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway, and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious, provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough.  (source) Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent which met Edmund's application, the high sense of having…  (source) Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

My mind was never yet more mercenary.  (source) William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1596