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vocabulary
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abrasive
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

show 6 more with this conextual meaning
  • His voice was abrasive, but he brought it back to a muffled whisper in a hurry.   (source)
    abrasive = rough or disagreeable
  • He rolled along with every inexplicable order from his superiors, every foolish act of his inferiors, and every abrasive personality that military life could throw at an officer.   (source)
  • Rather abrasively.†   (source)
  • She laughed abrasively.†   (source)
  • "Why wasn't the Agency informed of this tip you received seven months ago?" asked the CIA's Knowlton abrasively.†   (source)
  • I want to be careful, that's all," said Bourne abrasively.†   (source)
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show 2 more with this conextual meaning
  • I pull a napkin out of the holder and wipe the abrasive paper across my eyes.   (source)
    abrasive = rough (a substance that abrades or wears away what it rubs against)
  • It would take abrasives and chemicals—offhand, he wasn't even sure what kind—and scrubbing and scraping and grinding; and still, traces of blue would remain.†   (source)
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show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • The table Richard had reserved was in a dim corner, away from the abrasive daylight.†   (source)
  • Grant knew that Ian Malcolm had his share of detractors, and he could understand why some found his style too abrasive, and his applications of chaos theory too glib.†   (source)
  • This week I was reading "The Moons of Jupiter"—that marvelous short story by Alice Munro—to my Grade 13 Can Lit students, as the abrasive Ms.†   (source)
  • At the hospital room door, I watch Johanna for a moment, realize that most of her ferocity is in her abrasive attitude.†   (source)
  • Russo was in awe of his classmate, so much so that he was willing to overlook what at times was an abrasive personality.†   (source)
  • The Amy of today was abrasive enough to want to hurt, sometimes.†   (source)
  • He continued to drink from the bottle until dawn, and he became drunk on Fermina Daza in abrasive swallows, first in the taverns around the port and then as he stared out to sea from the jetties where lovers without a roof over their heads made consoling love, until at last he succumbed to unconsciousness.†   (source)
  • The abrasive sound of their passage increased.†   (source)
  • There were so many things about her aunt Jean Louise secretly delighted in when half a continent separated them, which on contact were abrasive, and were canceled out when Jean Louise undertook to examine her aunt's motives.†   (source)
  • Rhunon had him douse the forge, then she walked Eragon back to the bench with the files and scrapers and abrasive stones.†   (source)
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show 31 more examples with any meaning
  • Mixed with sweat, the dust formed an abrasive paste that collected in the clammy spaces between the feet and the simulated leather of the boys' cleats, gnawing blisters into their ankles.†   (source)
  • That was Artkin—abrasive one moment, gentle the next.†   (source)
  • Her neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern was "too abrasive," and another of the major female characters on the show, Phyllis Lindstrom, was seen as "not believable."†   (source)
  • That can be used in industrial tools, as an abrasive, in the jewelry trade?†   (source)
  • Where Madame Wang's words were as slick as goose fat, Madame Gao's sentiments were as abrasive as the barks of a village dog.†   (source)
  • Sharp, abrasive.†   (source)
  • Unaccustomed to the irritating texture of doubt, she felt tears as its abrasiveness grated over the fragile skin of her life.†   (source)
  • Janice was originally from Chicago, sharp-tongued, abrasive, ambitious, and sexy-you maybe thought-like your best friend's mean older sister.†   (source)
  • It's unfair to say anything negative about Pandora when she can't defend herself, but she was hard, very often abrasive.†   (source)
  • The abrasive labor of time, together with a radical change of habits (I was in fact shamed into becoming almost obsessively clean), gradually wore down the harsh syllabic brusqueness of the name, slurring off into the more attractive, or less unattractive, certainly sportier Stingo.†   (source)
  • That afternoon I asked Mrs. Brown to be less abrasive when addressing the kids, to be a wee bit more diplomatic, and to have a greater concern about their feelings.†   (source)
  • A new sound began to impress itself on them: a muted whisper, a hissing, an abrasive slithering.†   (source)
  • The others heard it then—an abrasive slithering, distant and growing louder.†   (source)
  • Soft fabric moving briefly across an abrasive surface.†   (source)
  • She heaved a boot aside as Summerset's abrasive words scraped through her head.†   (source)
  • The rotors wound down to a grinding, abrasive halt.†   (source)
  • The show itself attracts bad adjectives: "abrasive,"†   (source)
  • Carolyn makes a bright yellow banner with the words "abrasive,"†   (source)
  • Broken by the abrasive voice of the Security Council's Alfred Gillette.†   (source)
  • She's not a never-met-a-stranger kind of person, but she's not—not abrasive enough to make someone …. hurt her."†   (source)
  • For example, I quickly learned to prefer the positions stated by the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme to those more abrasive stances of the Union of American Exiles.†   (source)
  • For as long as a forward edge of a worm's ring segment was held open by a hook, open to admit abrasive sand into the more sensitive interior, the creature would not retreat beneath the desert.†   (source)
  • From New England Down East with its "eeahh" to Texas's drawl and its familiar "you-alls"; from the gentle nasality of the Midwest to the loud abrasiveness of the large Eastern cities with the inevitable "know what I mean?" tacked on to conversational sentences, whether questions or statements.†   (source)
  • Nasuada was harsher than she meant to be, but her heart was racing and her skin was incredibly, terribly sensitive; the soft linen of her undergarments seemed as abrasive as canvas.†   (source)
  • An easy going man, less abrasive than the others, a Southerner, whose slow drawl was either a cover for a quick mind or the halting resistance to a job in which he felt himself uncomfortable.†   (source)
  • Quiet signals had been sent and received, not loud enough or abrasive enough to be alarms, but they were there and she had heard them.†   (source)
  • Rhunon allowed Eragon's tired arms to rest while the blade cooled by air, then she had Eragon take the blade to another corner of her workshop, where she had arranged six different grinding wheels and, on a small bench, a wide assortment of files, scrapers, and abrasive stones.†   (source)
  • For the first time during the conference, the abrasive delegate from the National Security Council seemed to hesitate.†   (source)
  • From what he heard, Roran had concluded Edric was a competent commander-Nasuada never would have put him in charge of such an important mission otherwise-but he had an abrasive personality, and he disciplined his warriors for even the slightest deviation from established practice, as Roran had learned to his chagrin upon three separate occasions during his first day with Edric's company.†   (source)
  • His mind was troubled with hard, abrasive thoughts as to what the druggist might think, look or say.†   (source)
  • So many things in Clyde's attitude since Christmas had so shocked her that she was bewildered and without a plan other than to extricate herself as best she might without any scandal attaching to her or him and then going her own way—pathetic and abrasive though it might be.†   (source)
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