How to Use denature in a Sentence

denature

verb
  • To fix that, some cooks boil them before roasting, which completely denatures the meat.
    — Julia Moskin, New York Times, 9 July 2018
  • The combined action of heat and acid helps some of the milk proteins to denature and coagulate to form a large white mass of cheese curds.
    — Nik Sharma, SFChronicle.com, 9 July 2020
  • The alcohol acts as what’s called a denaturing agent, versus soap, which acts as a detergent.
    — Leah Prinzivalli, Allure, 24 Apr. 2020
  • The salt and citrus work together to denature the shrimp, transforming it from translucent to opaque.
    — Anita Jaisinghani, Houston Chronicle, 7 Apr. 2026
  • Instead, cook the onions first in order to bind or denature its precursors prior to adding your garlic into the mix.
    — Molly Burford, Southern Living, 9 Mar. 2026
  • When whisked vigorously, the proteins in egg whites denature and form new bonds, creating a tight network where air is trapped.
    — Sarah Jampel, Bon Appétit, 6 May 2021
  • As the lime juice diffuses into the fish, its low pH will cause the proteins in the fish to denature and form protein networks.
    — Liz Roth-Johnson, Discover Magazine, 26 Mar. 2013
  • The artist Leah Wulfman is working on the videos, abstracting them and denaturing them a bit.
    — New York Times, 1 Apr. 2020
  • One of their ingredients was denatured ethyl alcohol, which is very common in perfumes.
    — Yvette D'entremont, SELF, 13 Oct. 2017
  • Making light of violence against women is part of her act, castrating its power, denaturing the sting.
    — Katie Walsh, Twin Cities, 7 June 2024
  • An arrest report cited by the station says the woman filled a mason jar with fuel, denatured alcohol and nails.
    — Fox News, 15 Jan. 2020
  • Vinegar lowers to pH, which allows the proteins to denature more quickly and results in thinner threads.
    — Lucas Sin, Bon Appétit, 15 May 2020
  • By using delays and adding sine tones, the composer denatured the original recordings.
    — Christian Hertzog, sandiegouniontribune.com, 3 Feb. 2018
  • Unlike high-temperature cooking methods, cell walls don’t burst and proteins don’t denature.
    — Wes Siler, Outside Online, 18 Jan. 2016
  • But by 1910, when Duchamp was in his 20s, his paintings grew stranger, and his figures started to denature.
    — Alex Greenberger, ARTnews.com, 8 Apr. 2026
  • The pandemic has offered companies a boon — the opportunity to denature the old way of work and create new patterns and habits.
    — Arthi Rabikrisson, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2022
  • This is an album that takes familiar hip-hop starting points and denatures them, resulting in a compelling collage that feels structurally untethered to hip-hop then or now.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Yet filmmakers tend to denature archival material, strip it of its physical identity and its genetic matter.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2022
  • According to Kong, nano-diamonds can be treated to carry a small electrical charge which, when in contact with a virus, denatures the cell membrane and kills the virus on contact.
    — Eamon Barrett, Fortune, 29 Mar. 2020
  • Mechanical stress from rigorously beating the egg whites causes the egg white proteins to denature, unfold from their natural structure.
    — Alice Chi Phung, Discover Magazine, 8 Mar. 2016
  • First, denatured alcohol and odorless mineral spirits are different things.
    — Jeanne Huber, Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2023
  • The real guesswork concerns the narrator’s relationship to his homeland, a place all but denatured by his benumbed observations.
    — Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2023
  • But go back to the banks, and ask whether the real problem is that a decade of extraordinary monetary maneuvers has denatured Italy’s financial institutions.
    — Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 3 Jan. 2019
  • However, slightly denaturing whey protein actually improves how easily the body can digest it and make use of its nutrients, according to Lucey.
    — Claire Bugos, Verywell Health, 20 July 2023
  • The center of the island was cruelly denatured by the heavy hand of the Baron Georges Haussmann, a 19th-century urban planner who favoured efficiency over antiquity.
    — Bruce Dale, National Geographic, 17 Apr. 2019
  • What runs in The New York Times isn’t unreal, but much of it is filtered through a narrative so unbending that the irregular components of reality emerge as processed and denatured as loaves of bread on a factory line.
    — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 13 Jan. 2017
  • Austerity in the Eighties further denatured the relationship between schools and students, with shortfalls in public spending on capital projects—new dorms, athletic facilities—mostly assumed by students in the form of higher tuition.
    — Ann Manov, Harpers Magazine, 30 June 2026

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