How to Use countervail in a Sentence

countervail

verb
  • For better or worse, tourism represents one of the few countervailing forces against this trend.
    — Stephen Heyman, Condé Nast Traveler, 11 Nov. 2019
  • So for all the bad headwinds in the House, there's countervailing headwinds in the Senate races.
    — Fox News, 9 Aug. 2018
  • Yet Karplus includes a tree in the foreground as a countervailing vertical.
    — Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 8 May 2018
  • Meanwhile, there is no countervailing benefit to us with Turkey.
    — Nr Editors, National Review, 24 Oct. 2019
  • As the march progressed, something odd began to happen between the countervailing messages.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Equally vital is the restoration of countervailing power.
    — Sarita Gupta, Time, 2 June 2026
  • The center-field fence at Curley measures out to about 330 feet, but in the springtime, countervailing winds kill most home run bids.
    — Jonas Shaffer, baltimoresun.com, 1 June 2017
  • So the hot-desking drive has been accompanied by a countervailing trend, in which this elite get better facilities.
    — The Economist, 28 Sep. 2019
  • The lack of enthusiasm among investors and executives suggests a countervailing force is at work.
    — Washington Post, 18 Sep. 2019
  • The influence of the unions, which used to provide a countervailing force, has waned with their membership and with anti-union legislation.
    — The Economist, 13 July 2017
  • His policies are imposing countervailing forces on the economy.
    — Paul Davidson, USA Today, 16 Aug. 2025
  • When collective action, regulation, and the countervailing force of the state have been counted out, there is only the self to stand against the might of these adversaries.
    — Richard Cooke, The New Republic, 3 Sep. 2019
  • This clearly required countervailing measures by the government.
    — Jayati Ghosh, Quartz India, 5 Aug. 2019
  • So while Amazon is trusted, no countervailing force has the inclination or capacity to restrain it.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2019
  • As a result of these countervailing forces, this case isn’t very different from other free-speech cases the Supreme Court has entertained in recent years.
    — Cristian Farias, Daily Intelligencer, 26 Feb. 2018
  • The Spanish flu, meanwhile, is ravaging the city, countervailing the vibrant, creative forces of music and public works, the striving, the dreams of longevity.
    — New York Times, 17 Jan. 2018
  • So Democrats have all the incentive to make demands of their own, at the very least to apply countervailing pressure against Republican demands.
    — Jim Newell, Slate Magazine, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Rome, Paris and Warsaw fear that without Britain as a countervailing force in the bloc, Germany would become too powerful.
    — Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 19 June 2016
  • These countervailing trends and pressures push companies to the middle, in the direction of speech-preserving but responsive and activist measures.
    — John Wihbey, Big Think, 7 Oct. 2025
  • Software and digital signal processors then use the car’s audio system to create countervailing waveforms that are broadcast over the speakers to block the original noise.
    — John R. Quain, New York Times, 10 Nov. 2016
  • But without countervailing worker power, the economy can be damaged by unchecked corporate control and government capture.
    — Teresa Ghilarducci, Forbes.com, 1 Sep. 2025
  • That means creating a countervailing public interest to the dominant special interest of the livestock industry.
    — National Geographic, 12 Feb. 2016
  • And yet at the same time there are countervailing forces that push us in the opposite direction, and so America exists in this perpetual tension between liberal democracy and reactionary fascism.
    — Sean Illing, Vox, 15 Dec. 2018
  • American growers of crops such as apples, cherries, peaches and potatoes would suffer if Mexico, an important market, imposes countervailing duties.
    — David Karp, latimes.com, 3 June 2019
  • That includes Chapter 19, which provides a mechanism for Nafta partners to challenge antidumping and countervailing duties.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 5 Aug. 2018
  • Government spending to countervail the pandemic in Mexico is among the lowest in the world, and that will most likely condemn millions to sustained and, in the eyes of numerous economists, unnecessary struggles.
    — Azam Ahmed, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2020
  • And, in a break with the past, the VDMA is now expressing support for erecting countervailing tariffs when foreign products are found to be made with the support of government subsidies.
    — Greg Rosalsky, NPR, 30 Sep. 2025
  • Covering a Congress just starting its descent into partisan gridlock, Mr Komarow’s countervailing courtesy led the press corps to choose him as their negotiator over access.
    — The Economist, 3 May 2018
  • But beneath that, a second, countervailing undercurrent of anticorruption protests has been churning in the region, eating away at the domestic and international standing of those governments.
    — Drew Hinshaw, WSJ, 23 June 2019
  • To his sons, however, the Party offers meaning and purpose—a powerful countervailing force to the lack of prospects besetting their generation, which had been decimated by the Great War.
    — Rebecca Mead, New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2025

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

Last Updated: