How to Use pernicious in a Sentence
pernicious
adjective- More pernicious still has been the acceptance of the author's controversial ideas by the general public.
- She thinks television has a pernicious influence on our children.
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Some of those forms are even more pernicious than the old forms.
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New York Times,
4 May 2018
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So when and why did humans fall prey to such a pernicious threat?
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Andrew Paul,
Popular Science,
26 Feb. 2026
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This pop-science stuff can be pernicious, though.
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Helen Shaw,
New Yorker,
30 Nov. 2025
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Such a frame of mind is pernicious for the future of both our nations.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
National Review,
17 Nov. 2020
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Of all the circumstances in this case, that may be the most pernicious.
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Lucien Bruggeman,
ABC News,
21 Feb. 2020
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The third, and perhaps most pernicious, myth is that nothing can be done about it.
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The Economist,
17 Oct. 2019
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Many of the series' most pernicious bugbears have been dumped.
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Daniel Starkey,
Ars Technica,
28 Oct. 2017
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But in some ways, the effects of these glowing bedmates seem to be a bit more pernicious.
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Brian Fagan,
The Conversation,
13 Sep. 2019
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The study highlights just how pernicious this metal can be, even at low levels.
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chicagotribune.com,
19 July 2021
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More pernicious is the fact that so few people realize that this could be a problem.
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Michael Waters,
Wired,
31 Mar. 2020
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But that very fact is one of the reasons why conflicts of interest are so pernicious.
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Frida Ghitis,
CNN,
19 May 2017
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But there is a long and pernicious history in the South that cannot be ignored.
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ELLE,
11 Oct. 2022
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That tells you how pernicious these theories are and how their spread is so dangerous.
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Danielle Wallace,
Fox News,
20 Jan. 2022
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It has been called the new Jim Crow because of these pernicious effects.
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Indianapolis Star,
The Indianapolis Star,
17 June 2020
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That pernicious lack of knowledge, sadly, persists to this day.
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Sahar Mustafah
august 27,
Literary Hub,
27 Aug. 2025
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Smith figured that a person could outwit the pernicious forces of modern life.
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James Vlahos,
GQ,
18 Apr. 2018
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The former threat seems easier to spot, but the two are equally pernicious.
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John Bolton,
WSJ,
13 Apr. 2021
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And that’s the pernicious problem of having so many teams tanking in baseball.
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Dave Hyde,
Sun-Sentinel.com,
14 Apr. 2018
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Not as an escape hatch—that's a pernicious fantasy.
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Sally Adee,
IEEE Spectrum,
1 July 2019
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To his credit, Rhodes does not pretend to have all of the answers about how to stop such pernicious trends.
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Washington Post,
11 June 2021
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That may sound like a smart countermeasure to a pernicious tech shortcut.
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Nathan Agranovsky,
Washington Post,
13 Apr. 2026
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The closest wildfire was 85 miles away, but smoke can be pernicious in its effects on wine grapes.
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Esther Mobley,
San Francisco Chronicle,
19 May 2021
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But the show has been especially pernicious for the queen herself.
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Dan Barna,
Glamour,
25 Sep. 2018
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It was designed to be more resistant to one of the most pernicious diseases in the fruit world — apple scab.
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Connie Nelson,
Star Tribune,
17 Feb. 2021
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The notion that people have a right not to be offended is also pernicious.
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The Economist,
15 Aug. 2019
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Some of the most pernicious monthly charges are from apps and free-trials that people forget to cancel or pause.
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Amber Burton,
WSJ,
31 Dec. 2020
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Of all the health myths in the world, the idea that there is a silver bullet for weight loss may be among the most persistent and pernicious.
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Korin Miller,
SELF,
2 Jan. 2019
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Either way, this gets at the most pernicious aspect of even a simmering, rather than hot, conflict.
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Washington Post,
14 June 2019
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pernicious.' 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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