How to Use expropriate in a Sentence

expropriate

verb
  • All were expropriated and razed to the ground.
    — ABC News, 18 Apr. 2026
  • Chávez had ordered all of Venezuela’s ports to be expropriated.
    — Shirsho Dasgupta, Miami Herald, 27 May 2026
  • Much of the land thus expropriated was then sold cheaply to the Japanese.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Mar. 2026
  • In the weeks since the legislation has taken effect, no land has yet been expropriated.
    — Chad De Guzman, TIME, 7 Feb. 2025
  • Her best friend, Reva, speaks in self-help bromides while expropriating her wine and designer wardrobe.
    — Megan O’Grady, New York Times, 10 May 2018
  • After all, Exxon had its oil assets expropriated in Venezuela less than 20 years ago.
    — Jordan Blum, Fortune, 30 Jan. 2026
  • Each new nation-state meant a new claim of popular sovereignty, empowering the many to expropriate the property of the few.
    — Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs, 16 Apr. 2019
  • The house of worship was expropriated and given to a Russian Ministry.
    — Peter Pomerantsev, TIME, 20 Apr. 2024
  • Trump was responding to a new law in South Africa that gives the government powers in some instances to expropriate land from people.
    — Zeke Miller, Chicago Tribune, 7 Feb. 2025
  • Short of tax revenues, local governments treat land as free money, expropriating it cheaply and then selling it at inflated prices.
    — The Economist, 22 Mar. 2018
  • Over the years, Prymachenko’s iconic style was much imitated, with many paying tribute and some seeking to expropriate it.
    — Laura Kingstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2022
  • The country will move ahead with expropriating land without compensation, Ramaphosa said.
    — Michael Cohen, Bloomberg.com, 29 Apr. 2020
  • Market value was preponderant in determining the value of the piece of land that the state deemed worthy of expropriating.
    — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2025
  • To be white in antebellum America, for instance, was to be able to enslave Africans and expropriate native land.
    — Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, 8 May 2020
  • In response, Venezuela expropriated the assets of both companies.
    — Ben Hubbard, Dionne Searcey and Nicholas Casey, New York Times, 13 Dec. 2016
  • But even as some Cuban families whose properties were expropriated are still waiting for compensation, many of those items have been turning up for sale abroad.
    — Nora Gámez Torres, miamiherald, 3 May 2018
  • Rather than expropriating the wealthy, low-income voters in several swing states helped put a billionaire in the White House who then slashed taxes on the rich.
    — Daniel Treisman, Washington Post, 27 Feb. 2018
  • However, a law passed by South Africa earlier this year does not allow land to be expropriated without an agreement with the owner.
    — Hannah Demissie, ABC News, 12 May 2025
  • The city of Athens claimed the land using its power of eminent domain — that is, the right of a government to expropriate private property for public use.
    — Eric Stirgus, ajc, 29 Oct. 2021
  • The law is one of the raft of ways that Palestinian lands are unfairly expropriated, Palestinians and their supporters say.
    — NBC News, 11 Jan. 2020
  • Ironically, the family's home in Windsor was expropriated and demolished to make room for it.
    — Detroit Free Press, 22 Mar. 2018
  • But one detainee, a man in his 60s who had worked for Allende’s program to expropriate private mines, washed and wore his shirt and tie every day as a gesture of defiance.
    — Pamela Constable, Washington Post, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Farmland and forests owned jointly by a village or a clan were likewise expropriated by the Japanese since no single individual could claim them.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Mar. 2026
  • In November, El Salvador adopted a new law that will allow government to expropriate land for public use.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 9 Jan. 2022
  • Large foundations expropriated the wealth of the Pahlavis and tens of thousands of affluent Iranians to provide the poor with housing and health care.
    — Reuel Marc Gerecht and, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2017
  • Omar Marrero, the ports director in Puerto Rico, said the government had a right to expropriate shipments.
    — Richard Fausset, Michael D. Shear, Ron Nixon and Frances Robles, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2017
  • After the 1959 revolution, the state expropriated the ground floor.
    — Lydia Bell, Condé Nast Traveler, 24 Dec. 2024
  • Bozell also called for changing a land law that allows the South African government to expropriate land without compensation in some circumstances.
    — Arkansas Online, 12 Mar. 2026
  • Bozell also called for changing a land law that allows the South African government to expropriate land without compensation in some circumstances.
    — Michelle Gumede, Los Angeles Times, 11 Mar. 2026
  • In his view, the administration is effectively expropriating the decision-making power of owners and handing it to the state.
    — Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 8 Jan. 2026

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