How to Use defile in a Sentence

defile

1 of 2 verb
  • He was charged with murder, rape and abduction with the intent to defile.
    — Steve Helling, PEOPLE.com, 17 Nov. 2021
  • To the very end no image of Churchill defiles the sanctity of this film’s safe space.
    — Dorothy Rabinowitz, WSJ, 20 July 2017
  • Besides homicide, he also was found guilty of rape and of defiling corpses.
    — Chris Buckley, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2018
  • Militia members had ransacked and defiled the house.
    — Yousra Elbagir, Time, 25 Feb. 2026
  • Even so, the Pope disbanded the order since the whole heresy mess had defiled its name.
    — National Geographic, 12 May 2016
  • And there might have been just a little pity for the desperate, cornered liar who’d defiled his office.
    — Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 29 Nov. 2018
  • Friday’s incident isn’t the first time the church has been defiled by a member of the public in recent years.
    — Sam Gillette, PEOPLE, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Defiled and broken as the once-great automobile capital can seem, the past five years have seen great progress.
    — Kat Bein, Billboard, 31 May 2017
  • The seafood area’s ice machine was similarly defiled.
    — David J. Neal, Miami Herald, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Always expect to be disturbed, defiled and maybe even delighted.
    — Katie Walsh, Twin Cities, 4 July 2019
  • Their beautiful sanctuary has been defiled, and Emily is fired.
    — Jessica M. Goldstein, Vulture, 18 Dec. 2025
  • Language became another area of culture to defile.
    — Literary Hub, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Drug gangs kill with impunity, leaving their enemies’ defiled corpses displayed as warnings.
    — Lorena Rios, Bloomberg.com, 11 Feb. 2020
  • The work of love, and the question of what happens when love is absent or defiled, became a central preoccupation.
    — Literary Hub, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Ghost nets entangling turtles, plastic bags defiling corals, and straws in the guts of fish existed in a different world.
    — Jenni Marsh, CNN, 7 June 2018
  • Krystal wouldn’t be defiled this early Tuesday morning — not after that Monday night.
    — Michael Casagrande | [email protected], al, 14 Jan. 2020
  • The cause for her outbursts — which range from defiling her husband’s steak to slapping a fellow shopper in the supermarket — is best kept secret.
    — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 Jan. 2026
  • Earlier this summer, a German visitor defiled a temple by roaming through it without a stitch of clothes.
    — Christopher Elliott | On Travel, Anchorage Daily News, 13 July 2023
  • Earlier this summer, a German visitor defiled a temple by roaming through it without wearing a stitch of clothes.
    — Christopher Elliott, Dallas News, 12 July 2023
  • His family, citing their Muslim faith, which doesn’t allow for bodies to be defiled after death, did not allow his brain to be analyzed.
    — Tod Leonard, sandiegouniontribune.com, 12 Dec. 2017
  • The quick answer is that seven-inning games defile the traditions of what has been America’s most-traditional game.
    — Patrick Reusse, Star Tribune, 15 Aug. 2020
  • What’s curious, then, is not Trump’s eagerness to degrade us, but his uncontrollable urge to defile himself and his office.
    — Michelle Goldberg, Mercury News, 23 Oct. 2025
  • In most hacks that defile our computers, tablets, and cellphones, a traditional vector is through new code that is introduced and executed.
    — Frank O’Brien, Ars Technica, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Police charged Brevard with abduction with intent to defile in the Homewood Suites attack.
    — Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2022
  • The Seleucids captured the holy Temple and defiled it by erecting an altar to the Greek god Zeus inside.
    — Amy Briggs, National Geographic, 19 Dec. 2019
  • After recapturing Jerusalem’s holy temple, which had been defiled by the occupiers, the Maccabees searched for pure oil to light the menorah.
    — Haadiza Ogwude, Cincinnati Enquirer, 1 Dec. 2025
  • Countless horror films scare audiences with the simplicity of a foreign entity trying to defile the sanctity of the home.
    — Rachel Raposas, PEOPLE, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Pornography destroys the purity of the mind of the individual and defiles the conscience of the Nation.
    — Leah Sottile, Longreads, 20 July 2019
  • To plow it over is to defile the type of humanistic giving that has become scarce in our increasingly billionaires-take-all way of American life.
    — Maria Panaritis, Philly.com, 2 June 2018
  • Inside, what was once the pinnacle of aspirational luxury in New York has been defiled by bankruptcy.
    — Kim Bhasin, chicagotribune.com, 6 Dec. 2019

defile

2 of 2 noun
  • The path traces a gentle stream into a narrow defile framed by soaring cliffs.
    — Roger Naylor, azcentral, 13 July 2018
  • The easier higher slopes gave way below the timberline to defiles lined with tree roots and narrow ravines.
    — Simon Akam, Outside Online, 27 Nov. 2019
  • The 27-year-old Woodbridge man was arrested and charged with abduction with intent to defile and burglary.
    — Ria Manglapus and Lisa M. Bolton, Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2019
  • From the open valley of the Río Chaschuil, the road suddenly plunged into narrow defiles where the rock was blushed with surreal mineral colors—crimson, verdigris, malachite, violet.
    — Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 Aug. 2019
  • Rather than simple abduction, Fairfax prosecutors charged Hughes with abduction with intent to defile, which carried a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.
    — Tom Jackman, Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2019

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