How to Use discredit in a Sentence

discredit

1 of 2 verb
  • The prosecution discredited the witness by showing that she had lied in the past.
  • Many of his theories have been thoroughly discredited.
  • If anything, they’ve been used to discredit her.
    — Zachary Fine, New Yorker, 8 June 2026
  • How many more tens of millions will be spent as opponents try to discredit him and try to get their guy on top?
    — Carlos De Loera, Los Angeles Times, 29 May 2026
  • Our stories are varied and vast and a deep dive into one does not discredit the other.
    — Meagan Jordan, Rolling Stone, 17 Aug. 2025
  • Others call the antisemitism a false flag to discredit the protests.
    — Larry Luxner, Sun Sentinel, 29 June 2026
  • Demonstrations can be hard to describe and easy to discredit.
    — Nancy Gibbs, Time, 17 Oct. 2025
  • It has been discredited as junk science.
    — Catherine Santino, People.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • His lawsuit suggests that is a reason for an effort to discredit him.
    — Howard Koplowitz | [email protected], al, 26 Jan. 2023
  • But in the past, it was used to discredit a single account or a small group by naming them in the escort ads.
    — Joseph Menn, Washington Post, 28 Nov. 2022
  • Activists have worked steadily to discredit stories about famine.
    — Ruth Margalit, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2025
  • That is certainly one way to discredit someone.
    — Mary Ann Grossmann, Twin Cities, 28 Mar. 2026
  • Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too.
    — Alyssa Bailey, ELLE, 21 Nov. 2022
  • Do these circumstances discredit the Braves’ wins?
    — Gabriel Burns, AJC.com, 15 May 2026
  • And they were discredited not by elites; they were discredited by the whole country.
    — David Frum, The Atlantic, 28 Jan. 2026
  • One of those methods is to discredit elections, no matter who’s expected to win.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 7 Nov. 2022
  • Far from discredited, he was deemed to have acted honorably.
    — Maurizio Valsania, The Conversation, 12 Sep. 2025
  • If the Knicks had that happen to them, everyone would be discrediting them.
    — David Troy Outkick, FOXNews.com, 3 June 2026
  • Bullmer attempts to discredit her until Carrie, dressed as Anne, backs her up.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly, 11 Oct. 2025
  • Spacey’s attorneys spent much of the trial trying to discredit his accusers.
    — Jonah Valdez, Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2023
  • Demi also said that people are trying to discredit her by showing her text messages.
    — MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Nov. 2025
  • To say anything more would have discredited my experience as a godly one.
    — Samuel Ernest, Longreads, 2 May 2023
  • To be put in this category is discrediting.
    — Meredith Wilshere, PEOPLE, 2 Nov. 2025
  • The company insisted his claims would be discredited in court.
    — Chloe Taylor, Fortune, 4 Aug. 2023
  • House Republicans have since aimed to discredit the letter and the inquiry.
    — Prem Thakker, The New Republic, 24 Mar. 2023
  • The two doctrines worked in tandem to try to discredit Indigenous knowledge.
    — Brendan Ross, Washington Post, 22 Oct. 2023
  • This doesn’t discredit the fact that mental and physical changes from menopause can be disorienting and jarring.
    — Helen Carefoot, Flow Space, 17 June 2026
  • Many far-right activists immediately sought to discredit Mills after the news of his vote broke.
    — Tori Otten, The New Republic, 25 May 2023
  • Some see ominous echoes of states’ rights sentiment that was discredited at great cost in the 1860s.
    — Todd J. Gillman, Dallas News, 29 July 2023
  • Mayers said one lawful action should not be used to discredit another lawful action.
    — Steve Karnowski, Chicago Tribune, 26 Jan. 2026

discredit

2 of 2 noun
  • The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.
    — Zainab Fattah, Fortune, 20 June 2019
  • House rules also prohibit acting in a matter that brings discredit to the House.
    — Michael Gold, New York Times, 27 Dec. 2022
  • To their eternal discredit, county supervisors saw nothing wrong with building right to the edges of cliffs.
    — Logan Jenkins, sandiegouniontribune.com, 8 July 2017
  • No discredit to the movie, obviously.
    — Ryan Gajewski, HollywoodReporter, 4 Feb. 2026
  • And that’s no discredit to Garrett trying to play one of those two guys, or George Hill trying to play one of those two guys.
    — Jason Jones, sacbee, 14 Dec. 2017
  • Despite, or because of its farcical origin, debunk has taken the place of more sober synonyms such as discredit or expose.
    — Ralph Keyes, Time, 1 Apr. 2021
  • The comments discredit Taylor, her talent, and her experience as a sports analyst for nearly a decade.
    — Zoe Haylock, Vulture, 6 July 2021
  • But there are other, general standards in place that apply and forbid officers from conduct that would bring discredit to the department, Sarnow said.
    — Elliot Hughes, Journal Sentinel, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Kanwit found O'Dea brought discredit to the city for wounding a friend in a shooting while camping and not notifying the public about it until reporters asked about it.
    — Maxine Bernstein, OregonLive.com, 18 Aug. 2017
  • To keep Bennett, especially, in tow, Netanyahu needs to prove that failing to stand with him would mean courting discredit with future supporters.
    — Bernard Avishai, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Employees also are prohibited from taking part in behavior that would bring discredit upon the department or cast it in a negative public light.
    — Emilie Eaton, ExpressNews.com, 22 Oct. 2020
  • Flooding involves producing a significant amount of content to distract, confuse, and discredit.
    — Aaron Pressman, Fortune, 1 Oct. 2020
  • That’s no discredit to him, but rather an acknowledgment that the highest tier of NBA stars exist in a totally different pantheon.
    — Andy Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Dec. 2021
  • But to its discredit, the Tribune largely ignored them, instead writing about white performers like Benny Goodman.
    — Chicago Tribune Staff, Chicago Tribune, 5 June 2022
  • Efforts to censor, cancel, discredit, or destroy the work of anyone with contrasting viewpoints are canonized by the wealthy, powerful left-wing elites and their institutions.
    — Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 3 Dec. 2020
  • To his discredit, however, Manchin has also doomed that bill to legislative oblivion by simply begging Republicans to support it.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 7 June 2021
  • After 12 years of what some consider undeserving discredit, scientists are now re-claiming Pluto as a planet.
    — Janay Moore, Teen Vogue, 11 Sep. 2018
  • Why would Jefferson publicly defend Washington and discredit Genêt, only to help the French envoy behind the scenes?
    — Shaun Assael, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 June 2021
  • Fire Department employees are prohibited from taking part in behavior that would bring discredit upon the department or cast it in a negative public light.
    — Brian Chasnoff, ExpressNews.com, 23 Oct. 2020
  • That the students of the University of Virginia have not availed themselves of the opportunity to learn about this is to their discredit rather than Jefferson’s.
    — The Editors, National Review, 26 Aug. 2022
  • To her discredit, Judge Aquilina abdicated her role as an impartial arbiter and became instead a tribune for prosecutors and the victims.
    — Andrew Cohen, New Republic, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Gallagher was acquitted of murder but convicted of bringing discredit to the armed services after posing with the corpse of an Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 29 Nov. 2019
  • The regrettable attack on Nat (King) Cole in Birmingham by a band of hoodlums redounds to the everlasting discredit of those who foster race prejudice.
    — AL.com, 11 Jan. 2018
  • The petition shows how major tech companies are attempting to defang and discredit efforts by the Biden administration and lawmakers to regulate the industry.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 30 June 2021
  • Messaging must make distinctions, but also avoid getting lost in parenthetic abstractions or potentially easier-to-discredit targets.
    — Jason Ma, Fortune, 26 Aug. 2025
  • The ease of accrediting ensured, for example, broad coverage of stray Ukrainian artillery strikes hitting the city and sometimes killing civilians, helping discredit Ukraine’s actions to win back territory.
    — Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 5 June 2016
  • Thirty-five years ago, the nuclear disaster known to the world as Chernobyl brought discredit at home and abroad to an inept and corrupt Soviet communist regime and signaled the end of the Soviet Union.
    — Arthur Herman, National Review, 18 July 2021
  • After the Tigers’ latest annihilation of an opponent — and that’s no discredit to Homestead, which might’ve been the toughest test Northwestern had left — Bostic finally cracked.
    — Matthew Vantryon, Indianapolis Star, 16 Feb. 2020
  • Thrasher faces a host of disciplinary charges ranging from bringing discredit to the Police Department and failing to promote its goals, to incompetency and unnecessary display or use of a weapon, city officials said.
    — Alice Yin, chicagotribune.com, 7 Aug. 2021
  • The actions and inactions of certain FBI employees described in the Report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization.
    — Marisa Kwiatkowski, USA TODAY, 9 Aug. 2021

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