How to Use chemical warfare in a Sentence

chemical warfare

noun
  • Chlorine gas, on the other hand, has been used as a weapon in chemical warfare.
    — George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 18 Feb. 2013
  • Drug and chemical warfare was sort of a parallel arms race alongside the nuclear arms race.
    — David Lipset, Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Sometimes armor isn't quite enough, and chemical warfare is required.
    — T. Edward Nickens, Field & Stream, 13 July 2020
  • These explosives, as well as other chemical warfare agents, can be toxic to marine life.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 18 Oct. 2022
  • The remaining recruits are tested with a chemical warfare challenge and reveal what inspired them to sign up for the show.
    — Olivia McCormack, Washington Post, 8 Feb. 2023
  • At the time, military officials thought that gas masks would work better on clean-shaven troops, and chemical warfare was common during the war.
    — Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian, 3 May 2017
  • Either way, nerve agents are horrendously lethal and chemical warfare is an obscene use of chemicals.
    — Simon Cotton, Scientific American, 9 Mar. 2018
  • The solution is an escalation on our part — chemical warfare.
    — Jim Williams, Star Tribune, 29 June 2021
  • Phosphine is poisonous to many animals, and the colorless, flammable gas has been used in chemical warfare and by farmers to snuff out tenacious pests.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 14 Sep. 2020
  • Or mechlorethamine, a 1940s weapon of chemical warfare turned cancer-fighting agent now used in chemotherapy drugs.
    — Robert Pearl, Forbes, 13 June 2022
  • The tear-producing—or lachrymatory—effect of onions is a type of chemical warfare used by the plants to ward off would-be predators and knife-wielding chefs alike.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 23 Aug. 2017
  • Phosphine has been used as a fumigant or a chemical warfare agent, but that wasn’t why Sousa-Silva was interested in it.
    — Eva Amsen, Forbes, 18 Mar. 2021
  • Troops that are targeted by chemical warfare have the ability to adapt quickly and immunize themselves with protective gear.
    — Sohail H. Hashmi, Foreign Affairs, 9 Sep. 2013
  • Trump responded a year ago to a previous allegation of chemical warfare with a missile strike in Syria.
    — Mark Niquette, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Apr. 2018
  • Hundreds of thousands of species of reptile, insect, spider, snail and jellyfish, among other creatures, have mastered the art of chemical warfare with venom.
    — New York Times, 3 May 2022
  • Slick government videos showed soldiers in chemical warfare suits striding through empty streets, spraying disinfectant.
    — Declan Walsh, New York Times, 11 Nov. 2020
  • Future bots could help design and carry out biological, nuclear, and chemical warfare.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Exposure to chemical warfare agents—such as nerve gas—or to pyridostigmine bromide, a drug given to soldiers as a preventive measure against chemical attacks, may have played a role.
    — Aliss Higham, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Oct. 2025
  • All tanks and wheeled vehicles from the past 50 years have been tested at APG, and chemical warfare research is performed at the proving ground.
    — Baltimore Sun, 13 May 2022
  • And cyanogen chloride is indeed used as a chemical warfare agent, according to the National Institutes of Health.
    — Gabrielle Settles, USA TODAY, 30 Aug. 2016
  • Based on comments by the president and his senior advisers, the bombing represents a more forceful way of telling the Syrians to abstain from chemical warfare.
    — Phillip Carter, Slate Magazine, 7 Apr. 2017
  • Since then, she’s forged a career as an emergency medicine physician, interviewed veterans of chemical warfare and moved into private practice in the booming wellness industry.
    — Lauren Hepler, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Jan. 2022
  • The allegations prompted the United States to accuse what was then the Soviet Union and its allies of chemical warfare.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 20 May 2022
  • Defending Ukraine still uses Soviet-era books, and emphasizes how to pack an emergency bag and first-aid techniques as well as coping with chemical warfare and handling assault rifles.
    — Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Apr. 2022
  • His biggest coup was providing the Brits with the design of a chemical warfare dispersal device manufactured from parts that could be found in a tool shed and was capable of spreading deadly cyanogen chloride or other agents.
    — NBC News, 17 June 2018
  • Back in World War I, soldiers weren’t the only casualties of chemical warfare; the laborers who filled shells with toxic gas also suffered overwhelming injury rates.
    — Wil Sands, WIRED, 9 Feb. 2023
  • Two women were seen on security cameras walking up to him and rubbing a substance on his face — a chemical warfare agent known as VX, the United States later determined.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 13 June 2018
  • The only way to truly guarantee an end to chemical warfare attacks would be an invasion to overthrow Assad, something on the scale of the Iraq war, which neither president has wanted to contemplate.
    — David Lauter, latimes.com, 13 Apr. 2018
  • The alkyl chloride and organophosphate precursors are toxic, but not nearly to the degree of VX, which was developed in the 1950s for chemical warfare and is the most potent of all nerve agents.
    — Ben Otto, WSJ, 6 Oct. 2017
  • The attack on the oil depots could be construed as chemical warfare, which violates international law, because the aggressors likely knew the hazards the civilians who live in Tehran would face, Cleetus said.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 10 Mar. 2026

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

Last Updated: