How to Use rile in a Sentence

rile

verb
  • Her comments riled the professor.
  • Some of y’all in here dumb enough to get all the way riled up.
    — Sidik Fofana, Harpers Magazine, 29 Apr. 2025
  • My book has riled up a lot of Christians.
    — Literary Hub, 22 Oct. 2025
  • Some even waved their arms up and down in an attempt to rile up the crowd.
    — Shreyas Laddha, Kansas City Star, 6 Sep. 2025
  • His aim is to suppress their turnout while riling up his base.
    — Noga Tarnopolsky, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2019
  • But her policies and practices riled some of the rank and file.
    — Caleb Downs, San Antonio Express-News, 26 Apr. 2018
  • There’s something about these games that rile up the players and fan bases.
    — Victor Aquino, The Mercury News, 25 Aug. 2019
  • Scott is known to rile up his crowds, which has lead to past legal troubles.
    — Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2021
  • This isn’t so much an album that would rile you to the point of turning it off.
    — Amy Haneline, USA TODAY, 15 Feb. 2020
  • Playing all of this up riles the fans and keeps the machine turning.
    — Irina Aleksander, New York Times, 20 Feb. 2024
  • The goal is to rile people up, and that’s not hard to do on the internet.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes, 14 Sep. 2024
  • The point is that is that that's what he is keeps trying to rile everything up.
    — Usa Today Staff, USA TODAY, 5 Mar. 2020
  • Moroney, who sang covers, grabbed her guitar and riled up the crowd.
    — Bryan West, USA Today, 19 Feb. 2026
  • By the end of the half, the rookie was visibly riled up, due for a big half.
    — Bennett Durando, The Denver Post, 14 Apr. 2024
  • As usual in such stories, the blame doesn’t fall on a riled up Olympian.
    — Wired, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Golden, meanwhile, turned and started to rile up the home crowd.
    — ABC News, 1 Mar. 2026
  • Of course that's bound to rile people up, though perhaps that's the intent.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 14 Aug. 2012
  • The winds riled up hordes of bees and wasps, whose angry stings filled emergency rooms.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Aug. 2023
  • There's no better way to enhance the volume and bounce than what those ringlets can rile up.
    — Kaitlyn Yarborough, Southern Living, 16 June 2026
  • All that’s missing is a spark that will rile the people and elites and move them to take action.
    — Alexander Motyl, The Conversation, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Be cautious of taking on too much while Mars riles up Jupiter.
    — USA TODAY, 27 Feb. 2024
  • Getting rid of the tush push will not stop the issue everyone is riled up about.
    — Mark Kern, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Sep. 2025
  • Just before she was subbed out for good, Clark cupped her hand to her ear to rile up her fans once more.
    — Dave Campbell, Chicago Tribune, 5 Mar. 2023
  • The social media post is not the first to rile users after last week's school shooting.
    — Marlene Lenthang, NBC News, 6 Dec. 2021
  • In this case, the bait caused a stir in the sharks, similar to how catnip riles up felines.
    — Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 26 July 2023
  • In the episode, the town of South Park riles up a protest against the president.
    — Jack Dunn, Variety, 24 July 2025
  • The Senators have earned that right to get their fans riled up one more time in this series.
    — Julian McKenzie, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2025
  • Jaxson de Ville is riling up supporters via pub crawl.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2025
  • Trump uses fear about the border to rile up his base — which Schumer and Pelosi were quick to call out.
    — Tara Golshan, Vox, 11 Dec. 2018
  • The Illini led by as many as 16 points in the first half, riling up a raucous crowd.
    — Colleen Kane, Chicago Tribune, 16 Feb. 2025

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