How to Use booby trap in a Sentence

booby trap

noun
  • Someone had rigged a booby trap that blew up the car when the engine was started.
  • We set a booby trap by balancing a bucket of water on top of the door so that it would fall on him when he came in.
  • Some say the booby traps of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb are real.
    — Jeremy Hillpot, Discover Magazine, 13 Feb. 2023
  • And the area remains awash with bodies and booby traps.
    — Hollie McKay, Fox News, 16 May 2018
  • Dykes had set a booby trap: a snake pit of cables blocking the way into the bunker.
    — CBS News, 6 Oct. 2020
  • And now he's stepped up his game to a booby trap, changes things for us immensely.
    — CBS News, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Wary of booby traps and with evening closing in, the troops did not enter the building until the next day.
    — James MacKenzie, Reuters, 18 Oct. 2024
  • These are all of booby traps that are everywhere for them.
    — Jasmine Browley, Essence, 10 Oct. 2023
  • Write down the targets, draw up plans and booby trap the roads, lay down [roadside bombs], and spread out snipers and kill with silencers.
    — Zachary Halaschak, Washington Examiner, 27 Jan. 2020
  • From guns to booby traps, Dutch leads the charge to take down the gnarly, terrifying looking alien.
    — Lauren Brown West-Rosenthal, Parents, 28 Nov. 2024
  • She was killed while on patrol when a Marine walking in front of her tripped a booby trap.
    — James B. Nelson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 15 Sep. 2017
  • It was thought their digging had triggered a booby trap.
    — Dylan Taylor-Lehman, Popular Mechanics, 13 May 2021
  • At one point, Granit and the crew smash glass Coca-Cola bottles to build a makeshift booby trap.
    — Amos Barshad, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022
  • The booby trap was placed on the sidewalk of a Southwest Austin neighborhood and those injured were young white males.
    — CBS News, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Jun-ho’s drone picks up on a door on the ground that turns out to be a booby trap that kills one person and injures another.
    — Jennifer Zhan, Vulture, 26 Dec. 2024
  • Look, this movie is filled with giant culture war booby traps.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 19 May 2024
  • In the desert, the Stranger and Nori have become aware they’re being followed and set about constructing a booby trap and maybe killing their stalker.
    — Keith Phipps, Vulture, 29 Aug. 2024
  • They were targeted by land mines, booby traps, snipers.
    — Fox News, 15 Mar. 2018
  • They were targeted by land mines, booby traps, snipers.
    — Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Stranger said that during the initial search of the property, one of the deputies stepped on a board with nails sticking up from it — which Stranger said had been placed as a booby trap.
    — Teri Figueroa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Oct. 2020
  • The troops cleared mud-brick compounds and found many homemade explosive booby traps.
    — Habib Khan Totakhil, WSJ, 8 June 2018
  • Residents are being told to stay away from the city for now, until landmines and booby traps -- found in many of the towns and cities ISIS has fled -- are removed.
    — Arwa Damon and Ghazi Balkiz, CNN, 20 Oct. 2017
  • His soldiers fought slowly from house to house, impeded by snipers and booby traps.
    — The Economist, 17 Oct. 2017
  • The gunman in that attack, which killed 12, attempted to booby trap his home before the shooting.
    — Christal Hayes, USA TODAY, 28 May 2021
  • And some dangers are homegrown—Ukrainians who fled early in the war often left booby traps in their own homes in case the Russians came and tried to loot them.
    — Thomas Mutch, Popular Mechanics, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Erin Moriarty: Why would anybody set up that booby trap with a .357 in the closet?
    — Erin Moriarty, CBS News, 4 Feb. 2018
  • Once, Steer came across an explosive charge -- a booby trap left by the enemy to kill American soldiers -- ahead of him in the trees.
    — Grant Lancaster, Arkansas Online, 12 Nov. 2022
  • At the time, an Israeli commander said that soldiers, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft.
    — Michael Levenson, New York Times, 20 Nov. 2023
  • Secondly, while a drone will fly over tripwires, pressure plates and other booby traps, the robot dog will set them off.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 16 Aug. 2024
  • Trail cams may be easily spotted and removed – though the risk of booby traps can make this challenging – but they can quickly be replaced.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 21 Jan. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'booby trap.' 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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