How to Use deserter in a Sentence

deserter

noun
  • Morales was branded as a deserter before his remains were found about a year later.
    — Fox News, 15 Aug. 2020
  • The opposition needs just three more deserters from the party to pass the bill.
    — Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, 12 Dec. 2024
  • Morales had been listed as a deserter, but now the Army says foul play is suspected.
    — Chris Kilmer, ABC News, 11 June 2021
  • Soon, none other than the five deserters joined them, having landed a little way down the beach.
    — Eric Jay Dolin, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 May 2024
  • Her adult self takes a deep breath and drives her heel into the centre of her deserter sibling’s face, knocking him to the ground.
    — Roslyn Talusan, refinery29.com, 14 Sep. 2021
  • Anyone who attempted to escape corvée labor was treated like a deserter, and many were shot.
    — New York Times, 20 May 2022
  • In other times, a deserter could face a range of penalties, including up to five years’ confinement.
    — Melissa Chan, NBC News, 19 May 2022
  • According to some reports, defectors and deserters have been burned or frozen to death in Iraq.
    — Mara R. Revkin, Foreign Affairs, 1 May 2016
  • Based on his conviction, Hoff was declared a deserter from the Army and discharged.
    — CBS News, 22 Nov. 2021
  • Al Shabaab has issued a fatwa calling for the murder of any deserters, and a number of them have been shot and killed in the Majengo slum.
    — Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Foreign Affairs, 10 Jan. 2013
  • The series follows a team of Korean military police who are tasked with catching deserters.
    — Manori Ravindran, Variety, 7 July 2023
  • In November, the country changed the law to allow first-time deserters to return without punishment.
    — Kevin Lynn, Newsweek, 8 Jan. 2025
  • More important, though, is the fact that the judge who posited that hordes of deserters could follow Vovchenko’s example seems to be overstepping his role.
    — Air Mail, 25 Oct. 2025
  • No longer a savior of filmmakers, Annapurna became a deserter of them.
    — Rebecca Keegan, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2024
  • Go way back to President Lincoln, who made hard decisions himself about deserters from the Army, things like that.
    — CBS News, 15 Dec. 2024
  • Russian deserters who agree to testify in such hearings should be guaranteed that they will not be extradited to Russia.
    — Kristina Hook, Foreign Affairs, 28 July 2022
  • They were referred to as traitors and deserters by PGA Tour supporters and what then seemed like a large, vocal portion of golf fans.
    — Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel, 18 June 2024
  • Because of the security risks faced by Russian deserters, pseudonyms are used throughout.
    — Sarah A. Topol, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2024
  • Often, the same trafficking networks that are involved in bringing fighters to Russia also help getting deserters out.
    — Aakash Hassan, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 July 2024
  • No less dumbfounding is a passage that recounts, in obscene detail, the execution of a Wehrmacht deserter.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 26 June 2023
  • And a story has been handed down about a Confederate deserter who hid beneath the cliffs near Steele and survived with help from a local widow who was kind enough to bring him food.
    — John Archibald | [email protected], al, 13 Aug. 2023
  • In 1782, they were tasked with apprehending Hessian deserters, earning a reward of two guineas for each one recovered, whether dead or alive.
    — Kinsey Gidick, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Dec. 2024
  • After 30 days — or earlier if leaders had reason to believe Crisostomo didn’t intend to return or was high risk — she would have been declared a deserter.
    — Melissa Chan, NBC News, 19 May 2022
  • In exchange for help starting a new life, the Imperial deserter brings word of a powerful, potentially invaluable tool for their fight against the Empire.
    — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 16 Feb. 2023
  • And within his own country’s history, particularly, Dhont discovered the fates that met would-be deserters who were caught — brutal sentences often leading to death.
    — David Canfield, HollywoodReporter, 12 May 2026
  • Its return hearkens back to other periods in American history when firing squads were more common, such as the colonial era and the Civil War, when it was used against deserters.
    — Tim Stelloh, NBC News, 7 Mar. 2025
  • Language purists like to remind anyone who will listen that decimation actually means the slaughter of one in ten people, and was the military punishment wielded by the Roman army against deserters and mutineers.
    — Literary Hub, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Indeed, the sledgehammer has become the group’s calling card after its members filmed themselves clubbing a Syrian army deserter in 2017, cutting off his hands and head with a shovel, then setting his body alight.
    — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 25 Apr. 2023
  • Anawrahta was an 11th-century Buddhist king who established a Burmese empire, and the name carries a special meaning to the military, said the deserter, Zin Yaw.
    — David Rising and, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Dec. 2021
  • After a British deserter mistakenly gains immortality during the American Revolution, he is forced to face his cowardly past and fight against a sinister plot to destroy America.
    — Mike Fleming Jr, Deadline, 14 Nov. 2025

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