How to Use bankrupt in a Sentence

bankrupt

1 of 3 noun
  • As a lawyer, she specialized in working with bankrupts.
  • But getting sick bankrupts many families.
    — Scott Maxwell, The Orlando Sentinel, 8 Jan. 2026
  • The company will have a chance to contest that allegation before it is declared bankrupt.
    — Peg Brickley, WSJ, 14 Aug. 2017
  • Her insistence on tough fiscal love pulled near-bankrupt Greece — and Europe — back from the financial brink more than once.
    — Anthony Faiola and James McAuley, Washington Post, 4 May 2017
  • After earning $17 million, the men declared the company bankrupt.
    — Jacob Bernstein, New York Times, 16 June 2018
  • China’s Hong Kong puppet regime, albeit bankrupt of any legitimacy, is still unwilling to cede power to the people.
    — Joshua Wong, Quartz, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Alitalia was officially declared bankrupt in May, when staff rejected a restructuring plan.
    — Stephen Wilmot, WSJ, 2 Aug. 2017

bankrupt

2 of 3 adjective
  • The lawsuit could leave them bankrupt.
  • The last player who doesn’t go bankrupt wins.
    — Kirsten Acuna, PEOPLE, 15 June 2026
  • This is the same company that was bankrupt just two decades ago.
    — Fortune Editors, Fortune, 2 Apr. 2026
  • If our district goes bankrupt, our students aren’t going to do well.
    — Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Dec. 2022
  • By 1942, when the building was sold, the store was bankrupt.
    — Adriane Quinlan, Curbed, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Things are moving fast at the bankrupt Saks Global.
    — David Moin, Footwear News, 23 Jan. 2026
  • All the others lost money—and two of them went completely bankrupt.
    — Jim Edwards, Fortune, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Words like bankrupt and default imply some sort of sudden collapse.
    — Steve Booren, Denver Post, 15 Feb. 2026
  • And right now, the Warriors are bankrupt in that department.
    — Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 4 Feb. 2026
  • The result was no oversight for the bankrupt crypto exchange.
    — Vicky Ge Huang, WSJ, 27 Oct. 2023
  • But what happens if a cloud-storage company goes bankrupt?
    — Wyatt Williams, Harpers Magazine, 26 May 2026
  • Fishermen lost their homes and went bankrupt while the cases crawled through the legal system.
    — Lois Parshley, The Atlantic, 24 Dec. 2022
  • The tech bubble soon burst, and three years later, Network Plus went bankrupt.
    — Shirley Leung, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Dec. 2022
  • The diagnosis also makes somebody more than two and a half times more likely to go bankrupt.
    — WIRED, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Mortgaging tomorrow to pay for today, and we have been left bankrupt.
    — Linh Tat, Oc Register, 4 May 2026
  • Joyner lost his business in 2004 and was left bankrupt, but rebuilt from scratch.
    — Essence, 24 Nov. 2025
  • This seems to be very much a government that essentially has very few resources, is bankrupt.
    — David Frum, The Atlantic, 17 June 2026
  • As the price shot up, short sellers lost big, and some prominent investment funds went bankrupt over the ordeal.
    — Q.ai - Powering A Personal Wealth Movement, Forbes, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Three years later she’d be found dead in the courtyard of their home, and by 1997 the business was bankrupt.
    — Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue, 23 Feb. 2024
  • And then the studio [Orion Pictures] was going bankrupt at the same time.
    — Brendan Morrow, USA Today, 25 Apr. 2026
  • Failliet is a slang Dutch term that translates as ‘bankrupt’ so the name loosely means ‘finesse or bust’.
    — Stewart Clarke, Deadline, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Kline has spent more than a decade depicting the United States as bankrupt, hopeless, doomed.
    — Emma Goldberg, New York Times, 28 Apr. 2023
  • But that doesn't mean the program is going bankrupt or will be entirely unable to pay benefits.
    — Lorie Konish, CNBC, 23 Jan. 2026
  • The city was going bankrupt, the cops were on strike, and a fire had wiped out telephone service in my part of the East Side.
    — Literary Hub, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Midwest farmers will continue to go bankrupt.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 27 May 2026
  • The company went public, then bankrupt and was bought by Asurion.
    — David Moin, Footwear News, 26 June 2026
  • The now bankrupt company was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
    — Matthew Goldstein, New York Times, 20 July 2023
  • Her wind and hail insurer went bankrupt, causing the state guarantor to take over claims, gumming up an already slow process.
    — New York Times, 23 Aug. 2022
  • There’s a growing fear that the company might go bankrupt, as Musk himself suggested last week.
    — Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times, 16 Nov. 2022
  • Albertsons later bought back 33 of those stores from the bankrupt company.
    — Jordyn Holman, New York Times, 14 Oct. 2022

bankrupt

3 of 3 verb
  • Several risky deals bankrupted the company.
  • Are there any good all-in-one printers that won’t bankrupt me?
    — Daniel Varghese, WSJ, 30 May 2023
  • At the end of the day, these lawsuits may bankrupt the Sneads.
    — Marlena Baldacci and Ralph Ellis, CNN, 30 Apr. 2018
  • This is the type of thing that could bankrupt the company quick.
    — Fox News, 21 Mar. 2018
  • That largesse bankrupted the business.
    — Adam Sachs, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Nov. 2025
  • Yet either change could risk bankrupting the program.
    — Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill, 3 Aug. 2025
  • Crumbs went from a Nasdaq darling to bankrupt in three years.
    — Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 19 Mar. 2026
  • That means that an accident or illness could still bankrupt you.
    — Liz Weston, latimes.com, 17 June 2018
  • The ruling was a victory for states, which said such claims could bankrupt them.
    — Devin Dwyer, ABC News, 23 June 2026
  • If this guy doesn’t bankrupt this country, it can never be bankrupted.
    — Chicago Tribune, Lake County News-Sun, 10 June 2019
  • But is this worth closing mom-and-pop places, bankrupting small businesses?
    — Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 21 Mar. 2020
  • Two, to not bankrupt these companies.
    — Joseph Choi, The Hill, 10 Oct. 2025
  • Eliot Spitzer, who has not been heard from in a little while, promised that any holdouts would be bankrupted.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Try it all out—without bankrupting yourself—and then stick with whatever works for you.
    — Brennan Kilbane, GQ, 16 May 2018
  • Cancer patients should not worry that their disease will bankrupt them.
    — Matthew Herper, STAT, 23 Dec. 2019
  • Young also says the idea will not be a handout in a city where getting around can bankrupt those trying to make ends meet.
    — USA TODAY, 3 Feb. 2020
  • So is the threat that unionization would bankrupt the company.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 8 Apr. 2022
  • Not so for your typical startup, however, which might be bankrupted by the cost.
    — Hiawatha Bray, BostonGlobe.com, 1 July 2018
  • After its last series of civil wars, (the board) adopted bylaws that are bankrupting it.
    — Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 Feb. 2018
  • If the city loses again on appeal, that could bankrupt the city, Fouts said in his veto message.
    — Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press, 10 Dec. 2020
  • The police and fire contracts, long unchallenged, would bankrupt the city within a few decades.
    — New York Times, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Surgeons who don’t save Medicare money face penalties large enough to bankrupt them.
    — Andrew Wickline, STAT, 27 Aug. 2022
  • But the risk of creating bubbles that could bankrupt untold numbers of people is the same.
    — The Editors, Scientific American, 26 Apr. 2022
  • While ride-share use has gone up, taxi use has plummeted, along with the value of taxi medallions, bankrupting some owners.
    — Mary Wisniewski, chicagotribune.com, 18 Oct. 2019
  • Is the future incidence of T2d a threat to bankrupt our health care system?
    — Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 7 Apr. 2022
  • The President is a grifter who bankrupted 6 casinos.
    — Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Cox has said the bill invites lawsuits that could bankrupt the state’s high school athletics governing body.
    — NBC News, 23 Mar. 2022
  • Even still, Fox could likely absorb a sum in the billions without bankrupting its business.
    — Clare Malone, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The judge awarded the damages jointly against all of the defendants, so the action has a good shot at bankrupting all three of them.
    — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 4 Jan. 2020
  • The losses bankrupted some insurers and caused most national carriers to pull out of the state.
    — Ivan Penn, New York Times, 31 May 2023

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