How to Use perpetrate in a Sentence

perpetrate

verb
  • The men were planning to perpetrate a robbery.
  • The attack was perpetrated by a street gang.
  • He vowed revenge for the crime perpetrated on his family.
  • While parental consent laws may be viewed by some as a safeguard, they can be used to perpetrate abuse.
    — Ashley Belanger, Teen Vogue, 5 Sep. 2017
  • The data stolen in hacks is used by scammers to perpetrate their hoaxes.
    — Dave Lieber, Dallas News, 30 Dec. 2020
  • It is still used to perpetrate state violence and clamp down on dissent.
    — Westen K Shilaho, Quartz Africa, 7 Dec. 2020
  • Both are charged with theft and using criminal tools to perpetrate the crime.
    — Joan Rusek, cleveland, 15 Oct. 2020
  • Well, rape and torture is a war crime, and people who perpetrate these acts have to be brought to trial.
    — Simon Perry, PEOPLE.com, 16 June 2021
  • The bad clans perpetrate more arson, more murders, as our heroes flee.
    — Stephanie Burt, The New Republic, 27 May 2021
  • But by and large the levers available to a text model to perpetrate harm are limited.
    — Billy Perrigo, Time, 9 Oct. 2025
  • What is more difficult to grasp is what kind of person can perpetrate such misery.
    — Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 25 Jan. 2024
  • But police now say the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Dani’s owner.
    — Steve Helling, PEOPLE.com, 28 Aug. 2019
  • Trump has said climate change might be a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 24 May 2017
  • Those are just two of countless examples of abuse perpetrated on the site.
    — Alyssa Newcomb /, NBC News, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Jones’ claims were that the dead children and their families were actors hired to perpetrate the hoax.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, 16 Sep. 2022
  • In six cases, one or more of the authors perpetrated the fraud themselves.
    — Dennis Normile, Science | AAAS, 31 July 2017
  • Yes, there had been a fraud, but it had been perpetrated by Warren and Le alone.
    — Francesca Mari, The Atlantic, 16 Apr. 2020
  • There are a lot of people that use alcohol as a way to perpetrate violence.
    — Jennifer Maloney, WSJ, 15 May 2021
  • That and the people that were perpetrating the con were the two things that were most interesting to me.
    — Addie Morfoot, Variety, 8 May 2024
  • Many of the people who perpetrated these mass shootings passed background checks.
    — Tara Law, Time, 10 Aug. 2019
  • No one asked why Tom White perpetrated the crimes, or asked his sister any questions about his past.
    — Julia Bricklin, Smithsonian, 24 Sep. 2019
  • And when that happens, that makes atrocities all that much easier to perpetrate.
    — Domenica Bongiovanni, IndyStar, 9 Oct. 2025
  • But, at the same time, this is a bigger story than the acts of violence perpetrated against women in one war.
    — Literary Hub, 13 June 2025
  • The vicious pranks pulled in this show are perpetrated by two very mature women who should know how to behave better.
    — Punch Shaw, star-telegram, 22 Aug. 2017
  • In the mind of the plagiarized, as often as not, what has been perpetrated is nothing less than an outrage.
    — Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 22 Mar. 2026
  • Some of the robberies in that pattern have been perpetrated through brute force outside or near clubs for jewelry and cash.
    — Aaron Katersky, ABC News, 30 Mar. 2023
  • The only perpetrator in the area that has a motive to perpetrate them is Iran.
    — Author: John Wagner, Paul Sonne, Anchorage Daily News, 18 June 2019
  • Pastor Wright asked God to be with the victims of violence and those who perpetrate it.
    — Alex Mann, baltimoresun.com, 31 Dec. 2020
  • If Durov can be held liable for crimes on the app, so too can the criminals perpetrating them, the logic goes.
    — Josh Axelrod, WIRED, 4 Sep. 2024
  • Yet more than one-third of homicides of women are still perpetrated by intimate partners.
    — Kaitlyn M. Sims, The Conversation, 2 Dec. 2025

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