How to Use ruinous in a Sentence

ruinous

adjective
  • The house has fallen into a ruinous state.
  • Their efforts soon bore strange and ruinous fruit.
    — Caroline Fraser, The New York Review of Books, 4 Apr. 2026
  • That could be ruinous to a sector which has been in decline for decades.
    — David Blackmon, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2025
  • That truth, as told by these three men, was a portrait of ruinous neglect.
    — Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, 11 June 2021
  • The consequences of that may be ruinous.
    — Ilan Berman, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • His one sack was effective, not ruinous.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 29 Sep. 2025
  • This could be ruinous to families, as costs get out of control.
    — Jack Kelly, Forbes, 6 July 2022
  • Physician burnout can be ruinous for both doctors and their patients.
    — Sharona Hoffman, The Conversation, 9 July 2019
  • And yet, that ruinous, self-negating love was made to seem inescapable and glamorous.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2023
  • But a clash is brewing over what many take as a potentially ruinous threat to that quest.
    — Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel, 21 July 2022
  • Yet some ruinous outburst of his despair is not the worst that might have befallen.
    — Bradley J. Birzer, National Review, 26 Sep. 2021
  • It’s been almost a year since a ruinous civil war flared in Sudan.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 1 Apr. 2024
  • Still, in practice the threat from the tools is important but likely not ruinous.
    — Lily Hay Newman, Wired, 8 Dec. 2020
  • Trump warned automakers not to raise prices in response to his ruinous tariffs.
    — Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant, 29 Mar. 2025
  • But tariffs, in and of themselves, are almost always ruinous to both sides, to all sides.
    — Fox News, 3 June 2018
  • For now, though, AmEx seems to be finding growth without a ruinous price tag.
    — Telis Demos, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2021
  • What are the odds this just becomes a ruinous, all-encompassing war?
    — Sarah El Deeb, chicagotribune.com, 12 May 2018
  • In the days after the crash, the prospects of Huerta’s defense would go from bad to ruinous.
    — Peter Flax, Outside Online, 15 May 2018
  • These people are ridiculous; these people are ruinous.
    — Eugenie Brinkema, ARTnews.com, 14 June 2026
  • Breaking so many contacts between cells may seem ruinous for a zygote floating in the womb.
    — Clare Watson, Quanta Magazine, 27 Feb. 2026
  • And that is far too short, far too error-filled and far too financially ruinous to be sweet for the game’s health.
    — Paul Newman, New York Times, 1 Jan. 2026
  • Lopez pleaded guilty to robbing a male jogger that same night to avoid a more ruinous rape conviction.
    — al, 25 July 2022
  • Two problems emerge in the middle episodes, neither ruinous, both troubling.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 9 Jan. 2020
  • Dinner might have been ruined, but this certainly was not any sort of ruinous trade for either team.
    — Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News, 23 Jan. 2026
  • The ruinous fires that occurred that year in Hawaii provided a stark lesson.
    — Bloomberg, The Mercury News, 22 Jan. 2025
  • There are now a lot of high-mileage cars being driven by people for whom even a minor repair bill could be ruinous.
    — Jason M. Vaughn, Car and Driver, 23 May 2020
  • By the early Eighties, though, his drug abuse was having a ruinous impact.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Zidane won't care in the long term, but the failure to sell James and Bale is verging on ruinous.
    — SI.com, 30 July 2019
  • If a major business pivot is made at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons, the consequences can be ruinous.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes, 18 Jan. 2022
  • Only intense public pressure and the threat of ruinous lawsuits have led it to take action.
    — R. R. Reno, Foreign Affairs, 13 Nov. 2018

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