How to Use knee-jerk in a Sentence

knee-jerk

1 of 2 adjective
  • But others saw the bill as a knee-jerk reaction that precludes sustainable change.
    Trisha Mukherjee, ABC News, 3 Sep. 2024
  • But what about the show’s own knee-jerk hatred of the public?
    Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 26 June 2023
  • Ed could tell that Joe knew his knee-jerk reaction to check his phone was the wrong thing to do.
    Phil Blair, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 May 2023
  • One of the hazards of a certain age is the knee-jerk tendency to reminisce on the good ol’ days.
    Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 17 Mar. 2023
  • But that does not indicate knee-jerk reactions on the part of Tunisians.
    Michael Robbins, Foreign Affairs, 14 Dec. 2023
  • The knee-jerk response would be to say that nothing has really changed.
    Fidel Martinez, Los Angeles Times, 25 May 2023
  • Since Aries tends to be impatient, an Aries Moon may be prone to knee-jerk reactions.
    Women's Health, 12 May 2023
  • My knee-jerk reaction was to be a curmudgeon and say all of them except high school.
    Sherry Kuehl, Kansas City Star, 22 May 2024
  • In his view, the ban is the culmination of nearly two years of him and his team scrutinizing the app, not some knee-jerk move.
    Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times, 2 Sep. 2023
  • That makes sense from an emotional, knee-jerk standpoint.
    Mark Zeigler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 31 July 2023
  • What happened in the past may no longer apply to what will happen in the future, and you’re still left making knee-jerk decisions and hoping for the best.
    Rhett Power, Forbes, 18 Feb. 2024
  • Students came for zombies but stayed for the chance to learn more about themselves and their knee-jerk reactions to catastrophe, Stutzky said.
    Scottie Andrew, CNN, 13 Mar. 2023
  • So when the pandemic hit, my knee-jerk reaction was to just immerse myself in music and work.
    William E. Ketchum Iii, Billboard, 5 Apr. 2023
  • As knee-jerk reactions to AI faded over the course of the year, new theories cropped up about AI’s trajectory.
    Chloe Berger, Fortune, 25 Mar. 2024
  • None of its leaders have been willing to condemn the Squad and its bigoted allies who are knee-jerk anti-Israel zealots.
    Andrew Stein, New York Daily News, 19 May 2024
  • None of that might stem the knee-jerk opposition to the four-day week among businesses and their water carriers on Capitol Hill.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 2024
  • Such a knee-jerk response reflects deep ignorance of the art and conflict that Little Richard epitomized.
    Armond White, National Review, 21 Apr. 2023
  • There would be no crying about civilian deaths in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, no knee-jerk second-guessing of the Bush administration.
    Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2023
  • This is often a knee-jerk and unfair assumption as to the manager, who must be loyal to the association, not who runs it at any point in time.
    Kelly G. Richardson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 May 2024
  • But there’s a bit more nuance to what looks like a knee-jerk response to the financial rocket fuel of low interest rates, analysts say.
    Paul Davidson, USA TODAY, 24 Mar. 2024
  • My knee-jerk reaction was to call them sellouts, or deluded, as many progressives would.
    Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2023
  • No decision is made cavalierly or in a knee-jerk manner.
    Mikey O'Connell, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 July 2024
  • Sorry to be a knee-jerk ACAB leftist, but this whole police-brutality side plot isn’t really doing it for me.
    Emma Specter, Vogue, 28 June 2024
  • The most interesting thread of The Cottage involves Rustin’s trying to work against the knee-jerk sexism of the genre as Sylvia slowly discovers that her happiness shouldn’t depend on the men around her.
    Vulture, 24 July 2023
  • Is this sometimes tongue-and-cheek or knee-jerk militancy a disguise for the pursuit of the American dream, which is exported worldwide by way of Black music?
    Harmony Holiday, Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2023
  • The term is derisive and refers to local people who have a negative knee-jerk reaction to any project near their community.
    Justin Worland, TIME, 23 Oct. 2023
  • And, for anyone who has a knee-jerk reaction of assuming that means everyone should be exactly the same, no, of course not, as that is never possible.
    Erik Sherman, Forbes, 26 Mar. 2023
  • There’s a knee-jerk dismissal of the talking-head interview, but there are ones that are not just soundbite-driven but are truly oral-history approaches that put the story in the hands of the people who lived it.
    Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone, 6 Aug. 2024
  • But debate has raged over the effectiveness of the emergency measures that some described as a knee-jerk response to complex social issues.
    Hilary Whiteman, CNN, 29 Mar. 2024
  • And the hasty, knee-jerk responses weren’t particularly kind to his singing voice, which has—shocker!—evolved a tad after 25 years of touring, aging, and creative re-centering.
    Ryan Reed, SPIN, 10 May 2024
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knee jerk

2 of 2 noun
  • Trump and his trade team’s knee jerk reaction appears to be a tariff.
    Christine McDaniel, Fortune, 22 Mar. 2018
  • Shouldn’t have gone against Americans with your knee jerk pandering to the gun grabbers.
    Alex Leary and Steve Bousquet, miamiherald, 13 Apr. 2018
  • My knee jerk reaction was to call the police and have Elenor call our neighbor friends a couple houses down.
    Marina Gomberg, The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 Sep. 2020
  • The knee jerk is, how could a team in UC’s precarious postseason position not try?
    Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 2 Mar. 2020
  • Nakano said any knee jerk reaction to the North Korean threat could risk inflaming tensions across the region.
    Ben Westcott, CNN, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Analysts anticipate a knee jerk spike in crude oil prices when the market opens Monday.
    Dalvin Brown, USA TODAY, 15 Sep. 2019
  • Despite the substantial losses the crypto market took over the weekend, King said the selloffs were merely a knee jerk reaction that happens from time to time, and not something to worry about in the long term.
    Fortune, 6 Dec. 2021
  • This transit can create confusion, and doesn't support knee jerk reactions.
    Venus Australis, refinery29.com, 19 Oct. 2020
  • But as with many of Trump's knee jerk proclamations, his threats satisfy short-term political goals but appear to contradict long-term concepts of US interests.
    Stephen Collinson, CNN, 7 Jan. 2020
  • The fact that our knee jerk reaction to a woman becoming single is one of exhilarated empowerment rather than pity or dismay shows that minds have been changed, even slightly.
    Kathryn Lindsay, refinery29.com, 13 July 2018
  • The Narendra Modi government’s knee jerk decision to curtail ties with China overnight could cost India heavily.
    Niharika Sharma, Quartz India, 2 July 2020
  • But the narrative that opposition to the reconstruction is being driven only by an overblown reverence for Bill Bowerman and Steve Prefontaine is knee jerk and, wrong.
    OregonLive.com, 29 Apr. 2018
  • The knee jerk reaction to provide ventilators for Africa is understandable.
    Efosa Ojomo, Quartz Africa, 2 May 2020

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

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