How to Use counterfeit in a Sentence

counterfeit

1 of 3 adjective
  • The concert ticket is counterfeit.
  • There are a few ways to build a counterfeit battery.
    — Andrew Moseman, IEEE Spectrum, 22 Nov. 2025
  • The clerk claimed the pharmacy did not stock counterfeit pills.
    — Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times, 30 Dec. 2023
  • Some of the products are counterfeit and may be tainted with copper or lead.
    — Terence McGinley, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2024
  • The sale of counterfeit goods has long been a problem for the sports industry.
    — Michael McCann, Sportico.com, 20 Sep. 2025
  • All items sent to the company are ranked one to five for how likely a piece is to be counterfeit.
    — Marisa Meltzer, New York Times, 21 Nov. 2022
  • Some test strips sold online or through friends may be counterfeit or not work properly.
    — Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY, 22 Aug. 2023
  • The sentiment was a lie, of course, no more sterling than a counterfeit bill.
    — Joseph Lezza, Longreads, 30 Mar. 2023
  • So the offer was a counterfeit version of the left, which is what right-wing populism does.
    — Kate Knibbs, WIRED, 7 Sep. 2023
  • The victim, who is not named in the complaint, took one of the counterfeit oxycodone pills and died.
    — Minyvonne Burke, NBC News, 9 Aug. 2023
  • What are counterfeit fentanyl pills?
    — Greta Cross, USA Today, 19 Nov. 2025
  • Fentanyl can also be made into pill form, and it can be mixed in with other counterfeit pills.
    — Katia Hetter, CNN, 23 Mar. 2023
  • The currency, Willis warned, turns out to be counterfeit.
    — Christopher Harris, CBS News, 11 June 2026
  • The lawsuit did not state how many Rack stores allegedly sold the counterfeit items.
    — Renata Geraldo, Anchorage Daily News, 6 June 2023
  • But because the signals are so faint, they can be drowned out by cheap jammers or replaced by counterfeit ones.
    — Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering, 11 Sep. 2025
  • All of the products were determined to be counterfeit.
    — Gabrielle Fonrouge,paige Tortorelli, CNBC, 19 Sep. 2025
  • But what would’ve happened if he clerk never assumed the money was counterfeit?
    — Jasmine Browley, Essence, 28 Aug. 2023
  • The same can be said for the fight against counterfeit sports memorabilia.
    — Margaret Buranen, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Hardy explains that the rise of e-commerce has made selling counterfeit items much easier.
    — Margaret Buranen, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Now, fentanyl is mixed in with just about every drug sold on the street, including cocaine and counterfeit pills.
    — Georgea Kovanis, Detroit Free Press, 1 Feb. 2023
  • Each of the car’s doors were open, and investigators found what appeared to be counterfeit bills on the ground.
    — Caroline Zimmerman, Kansas City Star, 25 Mar. 2026
  • The Times tested over a four-month period, slightly more than half proved to be counterfeit.
    — Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2023
  • Many times the pills are sold as other drugs, such as oxycodone, and users are unaware the counterfeit pills contain fentanyl.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Feb. 2023
  • To this day, counterfeit DVDs are still being hawked on eBay.
    — Winston Cho, HollywoodReporter, 4 June 2026
  • In other cases, red flags like typos on the box could indicate the product is counterfeit.
    — Gabrielle Fonrouge,paige Tortorelli, CNBC, 19 Sep. 2025
  • One was for counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and the other was for fentanyl in powder form.
    — Ron Wood, Arkansas Online, 16 Sep. 2023
  • The most serious counterfeit charge levied against all of them carries a possible life in prison sentence.
    — Paula Wethington, CBS News, 16 Dec. 2025
  • Per the new bill, works identified as counterfeit are subject to destruction.
    — Tessa Solomon, ARTnews.com, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Did these souvenirs seem counterfeit to her, awful reminders of her long imprisonment in the wrong body?
    — James Marcus, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
  • The agency said this would reduce the production of counterfeit cards and curb identity theft risks.
    — Ben Kelly, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 Aug. 2025

counterfeit

2 of 3 verb
  • They were counterfeiting money in his garage.
  • After all, there was no way to counterfeit what went off at the park jam.
    — Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 16 June 2023
  • People try to make money hard to counterfeit.
    — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 31 Mar. 2026
  • But new credit cards have converted to chip cards that are harder to counterfeit.
    — Danny Hakim, New York Times, 14 Apr. 2018
  • To counterfeit that purity would be the purest form of corruption.
    — Wyatt Mason, Esquire, 7 June 2017
  • Purchasers could counterfeit digital tickets that will get flagged at the game — or no ticket at all.
    — Megan Cerullo, CBS News, 5 Feb. 2026
  • There’s no proof that a foreign adversary is trying to counterfeit ballots.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 3 Sep. 2020
  • Polymer notes are not only easier to clean than paper but also harder to counterfeit.
    — Ben Brasch, Washington Post, 20 Dec. 2022
  • He and Baines were imprisoned and questioned for counterfeiting coins, and Marlowe was sent home.
    — Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
  • There have been a lot of studies on counterfeiting conducted with customs and police, but these have mostly focused on the scale of the problem.
    — Joelle Diderich, Footwear News, 26 May 2026
  • The company filed complaints with Amazon about counterfeiting last fall.
    — David Streitfeld, New York Times, 23 June 2019
  • Larry was counterfeiting tickets to shows booked by other promoters.
    — oregonlive, 17 Sep. 2019
  • More widely circulated and easy to counterfeit, their introduction led to a rash of forgery—a hanging offence.
    — R.s., The Economist, 30 July 2019
  • In this case the driver of the truck did not have a purchase order to claim the delivery although those papers could have easily been counterfeited.
    — Steve Weisman, Forbes.com, 1 July 2026
  • The company has been accused of counterfeiting the Supreme brand founded in New York.
    — Khadeeja Safdar, WSJ, 28 June 2019
  • Murder, kidnapping and probably counterfeiting are all still against the rules in college football.
    — Mac Engel january 13, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 13 Jan. 2026
  • Once North Korea counterfeited crude $100 bills to try to generate hard cash.
    — Alaska Dispatch News, 16 Oct. 2017
  • It is known in the West for counterfeiting money, human rights horrors, cyberattacks and crazy-sounding threats.
    — Bob Drogin, latimes.com, 10 June 2018
  • Consumers report rip-offs ranging from sales of nonexistent vehicles, pets and products to counterfeit goods to costly free trial offers.
    — Jesse Leavenworth, courant.com, 8 Dec. 2021
  • This makes the ticket impossible to counterfeit, and tightens artist/promoter/ticketer/team/venue control over how, when and at what price a ticket can be transferred.
    — Brandon Ross, Billboard, 31 Jan. 2020
  • Federal prosecutors charged her in January with one count of stealing or counterfeiting keys and two counts of mail theft, charges that could have led to a prison sentence.
    — City News Service, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Aug. 2023
  • Frontline’s examination of the tape suggested that Crossley moved the board herself so as to counterfeit the man’s response.
    — Daniel Engber, Slate Magazine, 11 Apr. 2017
  • The report also called on tech companies to more aggressively screen their vendors and create restrictions on products that are more likely to be counterfeited.
    — Fortune, 4 Mar. 2020
  • Not only does fake traffic defraud advertisers, but ads that are served to counterfeit sites rather than legitimate ones deprive publishers and other sites of ad revenue.
    — Suzanne Vranica, WSJ, 27 Nov. 2018
  • This makes Temu counterfeits more difficult for consumers to spot while browsing, and more difficult to determine are counterfeit upon receipt of the goods.
    — Meghan Hall, Sourcing Journal, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Some of the forums state specifically that almost any type of criminality is allowed — bank fraud, counterfeiting documents, weapons sales.
    — Michael Schwirtz and Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, 12 Mar. 2017
  • Reports of dangerous side effects are extremely rare, and typically linked to counterfeit or mishandled Botox.
    — NPR, 17 Nov. 2025
  • The card has two high-definition, high-contrast images, making the card much more difficult to counterfeit, according to the DMV.
    — Drake Bentley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 May 2022
  • The painting is labored and lapidary, a bravura display of the artist’s ability to counterfeit finishes ranging from gold to velvet to glass to fur, and to catch in a likeness the depths of longing, including his own.
    — Jane Kamensky, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2018
  • For decades tickets to concerts and events were printed on special thermal paper that were difficult to counterfeit but easy for ticketing companies with specialized printers to print and distribute en masse.
    — Dave Brooks, Billboard, 29 Oct. 2021

counterfeit

3 of 3 noun
  • My currency was no good with them, counterfeit from the start.
    — Christine Sneed, New York Times, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Drugs tainted by counterfeit fentanyl are now sold on the streets.
    — Barry Meier, New York Times, 18 Aug. 2019
  • To me, the result didn’t taste like a cheap counterfeit but a breakthrough.
    — Kevin West, Travel + Leisure, 9 June 2026
  • To fight counterfeits, some food makers are turning to chips, not of the edible kind.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Of the 34 books that Kelly bought, at least 30 were counterfeit.
    — David Streitfeld, BostonGlobe.com, 23 June 2019
  • The records do not prove whether the counterfeits caused the complaints or might have been incidental to the report.
    — Alexander Tin, CBS News, 7 Nov. 2023
  • Many of the products were black market counterfeits, the department added.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Nike lawyers allege that this shoe is a counterfeit being sold on the StockX website.
    — Khristopher J. Brooks, CBS News, 12 May 2022
  • Using counterfeits was a typical thing in merchants, and bars.
    — Kotryna Zukauskaite, Smithsonian, 20 Mar. 2018
  • Facebook's inability to stop counterfeits has pushed some users to a breaking point.
    — Drew Harwell, chicagotribune.com, 4 May 2018
  • Such brands have expressed frustration that Amazon doesn’t do enough to fight counterfeits.
    — Fortune, 13 Nov. 2019
  • The caliber of those items ranges from counterfeit to museum-quality.
    — Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 13 June 2026
  • Petzke’s job was to receive packages with the raw steroid powder and ship the counterfeit steroids off to customers, the statement said.
    — Alana Levene, BostonGlobe.com, 21 June 2018
  • Eager resellers needed a place to peddle their wares, while buyers were hoping to avoid getting burned with counterfeits.
    — Riley Jones, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • The $1800 stubs were confirmed counterfeits and both men were arrested.
    — Rebecca Hennes, Houston Chronicle, 29 Oct. 2019
  • The non-profit said more oversight could help other counterfeits from entering the country in the future.
    — Meghan Hall, Sourcing Journal, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Noah is a collector of Gucci ephemera, the legit and the counterfeit from across numerous eras.
    — Dave Schilling, Los Angeles Times, 18 Apr. 2023
  • Safe handling and charging are indeed crucial, but what’s even more important is trying to keep counterfeits out of the supply chain.
    — Andrew Moseman, IEEE Spectrum, 22 Nov. 2025
  • While companies can ask for Amazon to take down counterfeits, the onus is on retail brands to invest the manpower to find fakes.
    — Cat Zakrzewski, Washington Post, 14 Nov. 2019
  • For years, the only Nike products sold on Amazon were gray-market items -- and counterfeits -- sold by others.
    — Fortune, 13 Nov. 2019
  • Upon hiring, employees are trained on how to determine if a bill is a counterfeit with the help of pens that turn a fake bill a different color.
    — Star Tribune, 31 Mar. 2021
  • Apple said the agreement with Amazon was designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online.
    — Reuters, CNN, 18 July 2023
  • The rapper Mac Miller died after snorting counterfeit and fentanyl-laced oxycodone pills.
    — Wesley Lowery, Men's Health, 18 Nov. 2022
  • The Super Bowl has increasingly seen counterfeit items produced and sold leading up to the game.
    — Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Then, two months ago, four people in the county died in a 24-hour period after ingesting counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with the drug.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Sep. 2019
  • Many academics argue the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the star of our $10 bills, is a counterfeit.
    — Mark Kennedy, The Seattle Times, 4 Feb. 2019
  • The works, which had been vouched for by experts, were counterfeits of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and others.
    — John Hooper, WSJ, 21 May 2018
  • West wrote on Twitter that lip kits from her sister Kylie Jenner’s cosmetic imprint were among the trove of counterfeits.
    — Jared Gilmour, sacbee, 13 Apr. 2018
  • Its expert team enforces strict production rules, promotes the brand globally, fights counterfeits and certifies every wheel.
    — Antonia Mortensen, CNN Money, 2 May 2026
  • One search of the premises yielded a cardboard box containing 4,000 counterfeit Quaaludes.
    — Mike Sager, Rolling Stone, 17 Sep. 2021

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