How to Use secessionist in a Sentence

secessionist

noun
  • In the short term, that means the West must punish secessionists.
    — Ismet Fatih Cancar, Foreign Affairs, 9 Apr. 2025
  • Storey and Jess are on a hunting trip in Maine when secessionists in the state spark a civil war.
    — Staff, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Aug. 2024
  • The border state had been rife with turmoil as secessionists street brawled with unionists about whose side Maryland should join.
    — Zaakir Tameez june 11, Literary Hub, 11 June 2025
  • If nothing is done, the secessionists may achieve success simply for lack of opposition.
    — U T Readers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Apr. 2026
  • That in turn, would deepen the rift between secessionists and the central government and likely spur more violence.
    — Joseph Hincks, Time, 2 Oct. 2017
  • In April, though, secessionists seized the port city of Aden and declared the region autonomous.
    — The Economist, 4 June 2020
  • We are clued in to the lodger’s identity (the actor family, the secessionist loyalties).
    — Parul Sehgal, The New Yorker, 12 June 2023
  • Once the Civil War broke out in April 1861, secessionists converged on the city.
    — Michael Wells, Kansas City Star, 22 May 2024
  • Indeed, the decline of the secessionist movement would coincide neatly with the Hindu right’s rise.
    — New York Times, 15 Sep. 2021
  • The would-be secessionists in the Spanish region of Catalonia are about to get a reality check.
    — Geoffrey Smith, Fortune, 2 Oct. 2017
  • One of his buildings, a five-story secessionist structure, housed a restaurant called JB Restavracija.
    — Ellen Ruppel Shell, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Nov. 2024
  • The proclamation only applied to secessionist states that were fighting against the Union during the Civil War.
    — Mabinty Quarshie, USA TODAY, 15 June 2021
  • Those three groups would readily band together to oust Sánchez, who is seen by the right-wing opposition as too soft on the Catalan secessionist movement.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 11 Nov. 2019
  • The trend is bipartisan and transregional; secessionist sentiment has even emerged in the last two states to join the union—Alaska and Hawaii.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2020
  • The Nigeria Police Force blamed secessionist groups in the southeast region for the attack which occurred in April.
    — Nimi Princewill, CNN, 13 Sep. 2021
  • The secessionist war had quickly consumed far eastern Ukraine, the region colloquially known as Donbas, and then spread west.
    — New York Times, 16 Jan. 2022
  • Kanu, 58, has over the past decade led a secessionist movement calling for parts of southeastern Nigeria to form a breakaway Biafra nation.
    — Alexander Onukwue, semafor.com, 21 Nov. 2025
  • There were echoes of this in Palin's own career, given her ties to the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.
    — Nicole Hemmer, CNN, 18 Aug. 2022
  • Win Carpenter, a prominent far-right voice in the State of Jefferson secessionist movement, was running third.
    — Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2024
  • Sanchez, a prominent secessionist who was elected to parliament last December, has been held in a prison near Madrid since October.
    — Fox News, 9 Mar. 2018
  • The coalition is still far from forming a government as Sanchez still needs the support of several other parties, most notably two secessionist Catalan groups.
    — Rodrigo Orihuela, Fortune, 24 Oct. 2023
  • If a state that led the secessionist charge in 1860 and repressed African-Americans for a century thereafter can change, so can others.
    — Tom Still, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 Aug. 2017
  • Five weeks after his inauguration, the secessionists fired on Fort Sumter and the slaughter of the Civil War began.
    — Sean Wilentz, New York Times, 21 May 2018
  • Of course, Baltimore cannot be called a Northern city like New York (although secessionist sympathy remained strong for a time in the latter).
    — Harold Holzer, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 July 2020
  • This scuttles a compromise, whereby paintings of Lee in his prewar blue Army uniform could remain while the portrait of Lee the secessionist and enslaver came down.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • At the party, a dignitary remarks about General Zlatan's absence at the winter fête, and his plans to create a secessionist alliance with the Fjerdans.
    — Nick Schager, EW.com, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Greater Idaho Founded in 2020, Greater Idaho is one of the country’s younger secessionist movements.
    — Scott Spires Britannica Editors June 3, Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 June 2026
  • Puigdemont -- the former mayor of Girona, one of Catalonia's largest cities -- is a staunch secessionist, and his ruling coalition in the regional government wants to leave Spain.
    — chicagotribune.com, 31 May 2017
  • Assad’s government has cast the SDF as a secessionist force that has been pilfering the country’s wealth while controlling Syria’s major oil fields.
    — Vladimir Isachenkov, ajc, 25 Apr. 2023
  • In order to secure votes against Rajoy from Catalonia's separatists, Sanchez had to promise to open talks with the secessionists about the future of the northeastern region.
    — Joseph Wilson, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 June 2018

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