How to Use invidious in a Sentence

invidious

adjective
  • The boss made invidious distinctions between employees.
  • The more invidious reason to claim that people are born with certain traits is to avoid having to help people do any better.
    — Eugenia Cheng, Wired, 25 Aug. 2020
  • But then there are a bunch of invidious distinctions that start to separate the GA campers.
    — Barrett Swanson, Harper's Magazine, 2 Jan. 2025
  • Tech companies are increasingly facing the invidious choice of which side of the divide to be on.
    — The Economist, 20 June 2020
  • Those invidious assumptions are reflected these days all over TV and in the movies.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 22 Oct. 2021
  • The king, who will address Congress, could appear to be in an invidious position.
    — Kamal Ahmed, Fortune, 2 Apr. 2026
  • Closer to home, the mechanisms of repression are less heavy-handed, but no less invidious in their intent.
    — Laura Beers, CNN, 6 May 2022
  • Of course, comparisons to Davidson’s greatest hits are not just invidious but unfair to Ritchie.
    — Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2021
  • And people are pretty good at seeing their own behavior in the best light and pretty bad at seeing an invidious pattern to their assumptions.
    — New York Times, 2 July 2019
  • As to what happens next, the Australian government has put itself in an invidious position.
    — Tim Soutphommasane and Marc Stears, CNN, 12 Jan. 2022
  • Roberts regards race as an invidious distinction whose time has passed rather than as a living idea that can build group identity and solidarity.
    — David Shih, The New Republic, 14 June 2023
  • Most Justices in Wygant seemed to consider racial bias to be less invidious in hiring than firing decisions.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 17 Aug. 2022
  • There is much more to be said on backsliding, including about its invidious foreign policy consequences.
    — Foreign Affairs, 19 Oct. 2021
  • Still others objected to the idea of a list in the first place, noting its intrinsically arbitrary and invidious nature.
    — New York Times, 22 June 2018
  • The Wirecard fraud has again brought to public attention the invidious negligence of some auditors.
    — Karthik Ramanna, Fortune, 11 July 2020
  • Even this, however, failed to impress the invidious keepers of independent rock music.
    — M.t. Richards, Chicago Tribune, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Farewell to the debt collectors, the invidious bureaucrats, the endless frustrations.
    — David Grann, The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2023
  • People have a right to work, attend school, obtain loans, use public transportation, vote, and secure housing free from invidious discrimination.
    — WIRED, 6 Oct. 2022
  • Monday’s ruling won’t open the floodgates to invidious discrimination as critics imagine.
    — Ryan T. Anderson, WSJ, 6 June 2018
  • Masculine critical categories stopped being applied; other, more invidious ones crept in.
    — Clare Bucknell, The New York Review of Books, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Even California’s liberal electorate signaled last month that crude and invidious affirmative action should remain a thing of the past.
    — Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 8 Dec. 2020
  • Because there is only one motive—to realize a maximum of benefit at a minimum of cost—those who do not flourish are losers in an invidious, Darwinian sense.
    — Marilynne Robinson, The New York Review of Books, 27 May 2020
  • The statement compared Israel’s border wall to the Berlin Wall and drew indirect but invidious analogies to apartheid, slavery and Nazism.
    — Barton Swaim, WSJ, 16 Dec. 2020
  • Infidels are by definition misguided and prone to ignorant, invidious ideas.
    — Reuel Marc Gerecht, WSJ, 25 Aug. 2022
  • His writing demystifies the world before us, dispelling the cloud created by the chaotic motivations and invidious narcissism of the market.
    — Tiana Reid, Vulture, 31 Aug. 2021
  • Erecting private obstacles blocking public access to state laws is especially invidious.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 18 Mar. 2021
  • The 14th Amendment requires the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.
    — Washington Post, 11 June 2017
  • The 14th Amendment requires the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.
    — Karl R. Bauman, The Seattle Times, 12 June 2017
  • Any persistent disparity between racial or social groups is taken as ipso facto proof of invidious discrimination.
    — Charles Kesler, National Review, 20 June 2024
  • Doniger’s invidious contrast of the poetic quality of the work between its first and second books is as much a consequence of the text itself as of the poetic prowess of the translators and editors involved.
    — Wendy Doniger, The New York Review of Books, 7 Apr. 2022

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