How to Use piranha in a Sentence

piranha

noun
  • Charlie hires and fires a nice lawyer and buys back the piranha.
    — Hunter Harris, Vulture, 27 May 2022
  • So there are going to be a fish balloon, a crab, a piranha and a shark that will be out there.
    — Annie Alleman, Naperville Sun, 21 June 2017
  • Once built, the piranha plant stands over nine inches, and the head, stalk, mouth, and leaves can all be posed by the builder.
    — Alida Nugent, Peoplemag, 10 Apr. 2024
  • Check out the tropical birds and piranha in the waiting area.
    — Anne Harnagel, latimes.com, 18 May 2018
  • The tooth shape, like that of a modern piranha, is adapted to cut fins and rip flesh out of larger prey.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 18 Oct. 2018
  • Fittingly, at the foot of the tree, the roots are immersed in a huge tank teaming with piranha fish.
    — Caroline Reid, Forbes.com, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Game Watch out, Mario and Luigi, the piranha plant is out to get you!
    — Maya Polton, Parents, 24 Mar. 2024
  • The piranha kept bumping, with audible thuds, into the glass walls of its prison.
    — John Horgan, Scientific American, 24 July 2021
  • This monstrous fish is a tambaqui, a close relative of the piranha.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 22 Mar. 2011
  • In reality, humans don't have to worry too much about death by piranha bite.
    — Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 26 Jan. 2022
  • The reason is that pirarucu share their habitat with piranha.
    — The Economist, 17 Oct. 2019
  • Get close to sharks and piranhas; dare him to touch a stingray, ball python, bearded dragon, or even an alligator.
    — The Hartford Courant, courant.com, 8 June 2017
  • Harmon, who took to guarding Chavez like a hungry piranha coming off a fast, still wore her game face in postgame.
    — Cedric Golden, Austin American Statesman, 3 Feb. 2026
  • Twelve pounds of border collie and short-haired terrier with a soft belly and tiny little piranha teeth.
    — Marc Lester, adn.com, 16 May 2015
  • But the top few players in a game tend to play on at length, until all but one falls perhaps by dropping into lava or a piranha plant.
    — Shannon Liao, CNN, 1 Oct. 2020
  • The set also includes two coins inspired by the classic game, in addition to a buildable brick pipe to place the piranha in.
    — Kelsey Fredricks, People.com, 10 Oct. 2024
  • Tourists who make it to the remote region flock to the lake in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the rare pink dolphin or trying their hand at piranha fishing.
    — Lucy Sherriff, CNN, 13 Aug. 2021
  • There are huge snapping piranha plants that look like venus fly traps, stylized green trees and a cafe inside an over-sized toadstool complete with a red cap and white dots.
    — Caroline Reid, Forbes, 19 Feb. 2023
  • Despite the hazards, the Pororoca is popular with surfers, who don’t mind sharing a wave with a caiman or a piranha.
    — Emily Matchar, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Feb. 2022
  • Like quicksand pits or cobras poised to strike, piranha attacks are one of those exotic dangers that are much more familiar from the movies than real life.
    — Jim Kiest, San Antonio Express-News, 15 Apr. 2021
  • Nate was a piranha in a small pond who found himself in a dangerous ecosystem, swallowed by bigger, more dangerous predators.
    — Dani Di Placido, Forbes.com, 25 May 2026
  • The actors and extras in Texas basically frolicked, and then thrashed around, in piranha-free water.
    — Jim Kiest, San Antonio Express-News, 15 Apr. 2021
  • The upstream piranhas attacked her, and her blood flowing downstream attracted the rest of the piranhas, leaving the creek clear for the herd to cross.
    — Arkansas Online, 27 Jan. 2026
  • Researchers credit millions of years of evolution in close proximity to deadly fish like the piranha.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 18 Oct. 2019
  • The fish, which closely resembles a piranha and is native to South America, has teeth that look like those of a human.
    — Brenton Blanchet, Peoplemag, 31 Aug. 2023
  • Go on a night excursion by foot or canoe, fish for piranha, and stay in one of eleven tree houses, built into Ironwood trees dozens of feet off the forest floor.
    — Austin Merrill, WSJ, 3 Dec. 2018
  • Other available badges let Mario jump higher, grab distant walls with a piranha plant grappling hook, or climb up walls with a useful vertical jump.
    — Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 18 Oct. 2023
  • Alexandre Aja helmed his loose remake of the B-movie classic about a school of piranha that causes bloody chaos at a waterside resort.
    — Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 3 Jan. 2025
  • This evolutionary masterpiece has an even greater trick -- its scales, which researchers have compared to a bullet-proof vest, protect it from piranha attacks.
    — Tom Page, CNN, 17 Nov. 2020
  • Despite its legendary sharp teeth, black piranha is a meaty fish that’s usually caught by hand line and prepared by carefully butterflying and roasting over a fire.
    — National Geographic, 20 May 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'piranha.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: