How to Use shill in a Sentence

shill

1 of 2 verb
  • Jimmy Fallon is shilling for a tech venture.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Use the power of your vote to elect gun control candidates and reject those who shill for the gun lobby.
    — Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2022
  • Statements and video of unidentified employees who shill for you?
    — The Hive, 16 Feb. 2017
  • The government views shilling for makeup or shoes as different from shilling for crypto.
    — Elle Reeve, CNN, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Trump, who had a licensing deal to shill the nonsense, received at least $7 million in cash and crypto.
    — Dan Alexander, Forbes.com, 5 June 2025
  • Even the most famous influencers, the ones who get deals with luxury brands, all seem to be shilling for the platform lately.
    — Maura Judkis, Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2023
  • Then Guillermo del Toro shilled a fake energy drink on Thursday.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 7 Nov. 2025
  • On every flight, we are made to read frequent announcements and walk through the cabin shilling the applications.
    — Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 30 Aug. 2023
  • Influencers on social media are human facades of cool who mostly shill for products.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 2 Feb. 2022
  • And why wouldn’t CC Mobile onboard Jimmy to shill cellphones at one of their area stores?
    — Kenny Herzog, Vulture, 18 Apr. 2022
  • Runway is under fire after shilling for fast fashion, and Andy is there to credibility-wash the mag.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 30 Apr. 2026
  • One of the few voices raised in opposition came from Hopper, still red baiting and shilling for the producers.
    — Thomas Doherty, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 July 2023
  • The work’s title was a metaphor for how the cosmetics industry shills unnecessary products.
    — Ashley Weatherford, The Cut, 11 May 2018
  • Longtime fans of the Grammy winner might wonder how much KFC paid her for shilling their new product.
    — Grace Schneider, The Courier-Journal, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Yep, that is Rodman shilling for a cryptocurrency site that hopes to become the preferred payment method for weed transactions.
    — Stephen A. Crockett Jr., The Root, 12 June 2018
  • Godzilla has been recruited to shill a range of products in commercials, from Snickers to Fiat cars.
    — Clark Collis, EW.com, 3 Nov. 2019
  • The seriousness of the moment had been punctured by the arrival of what felt like a souvenir, the kind shilled by amusement parks after a ride on their tallest roller coaster.
    — Elissa Strauss, Glamour, 11 Oct. 2018
  • That might be due, in part, to the fact there's less promotion involved, since shilling for upcoming movies or TV shows feels like a little awkward.
    — Brian Lowry, CNN, 17 Apr. 2020
  • Other public figures use the platform as a place to rant, or to shill for the highest bidder; Hathaway, on the other hand, does not in fact post anything herself.
    — Elizabeth Holmes, Town & Country, 8 Jan. 2019
  • And corporations shilling everything from gasoline to overalls often called on Hatch for mammoth adverts.
    — Jon Waterhouse, CNN, 7 June 2017
  • Johnson, for his part, continues to shill for the slumping Tories, while trying to salvage Brexit’s legacy.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, New Yorker, 25 June 2026
  • The vision is an entire ecosystem in which sellers can hawk their wares to consumers directly, creators can shill sponcon, and consumers can buy things, all without ever leaving the app.
    — Stephanie McNeal, Glamour, 19 July 2023
  • The cultural import of these promotions is now so accepted that big stars who once, jealous of their reputations, would shill only overseas do not hesitate to say yes.
    — Robert Lloydtelevision Critic, Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 2023
  • Ford Times was a house-organ publication that shilled the virtues of owning, not surprisingly, a Ford automobile.
    — Peter Tertzakian, USA TODAY, 23 Oct. 2017
  • Even though big-name Democrats are hastening to dump Weinstein’s donations as if the cash were on fire, some progressives are still shilling for the powerful exec.
    — Alexandra Desanctis, National Review, 8 Oct. 2017
  • Others turned their ire directly on the founders, harshly criticizing them for capitalizing on the work of thousands of volunteers and then shilling their product in that very same space.
    — WIRED, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Instead of shilling for beer or airlines or offshore casinos, Lerner gave the real estate on the front of Villa’s shirt to a children’s hospice foundation.
    — Jonathan Clegg, WSJ, 30 Nov. 2018
  • The deluge of discourse started when showrunner’s assistant Olivia Maher posted a video back in May shilling the virtues of her mish-mash of cheeses and bread, sparking a slew of riffs.
    — Ali Francis, Bon Appétit, 19 July 2023
  • Even Kellogg’s Kashi line of high-fiber, protein-rich cereals have shed sales in recent years, inviting criticism that big food companies have trouble shilling better-for-you options.
    — Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg.com, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Where the Rio Grande meets the sea, the rockets of SpaceX are launched; astronomers gaze skyward, hawkers shill their wares and environmentalists survey the damage.
    — Matthew Carey, Deadline, 12 Mar. 2026

shill

2 of 2 noun
  • Experts say that means auction houses are free to use shills to jack up the bidding.
    — Dennis Wagner, azcentral, 24 June 2019
  • Best of the web — More stories like this, please, about celebrity shills feeling the pain.
    — Ryan Faughnder, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2023
  • Part of the brothers’ shtick is their tireless commitment to the products they are paid to shill.
    — Julia Black, Vanity Fair, 8 Jan. 2026
  • Turns out Alex Jones is a complete shill while pretending to fight the power!
    — Tom Philip, GQ, 1 Aug. 2017
  • Hope Sharon Kennedy, who’s a complete shill for the probable can party.
    — Laura Johnston, cleveland, 26 May 2022
  • Shill’s instillation centers on a large-scale curtain made of gold spandex.
    — Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Know, 28 May 2017
  • The first results are likely to be ads for other sites that shill credit monitoring.
    — Liz Weston, oregonlive, 24 July 2021
  • Of course, this is not the first time Messi has acted as a shill for Saudi Arabia.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 10 May 2023
  • Experts disagree on whether the use of shill bidders is common, or appropriate.
    — Dennis Wagner, azcentral, 24 June 2019
  • If an auctioneer uses house bidders to get a minimum price, these items are most likely the targets for shills.
    — Dennis Wagner, azcentral, 24 June 2019
  • One prompt turned Gemini into a shill for an imaginary product.
    — PC Magazine, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Irving was one of its chief shills, and for a decade traveled the globe spewing pro-Nazi revisions of history.
    — Jerad W. Alexander, Esquire, 17 Feb. 2017
  • The haters likely will look at Brewlab as a corporate shill posing as a microbrew to win back Seattle.
    — Tan Vinh, The Seattle Times, 6 Sep. 2017
  • The Joint List, outraged, worked to portray him as a shill for Netanyahu, and the strategy seemed to work.
    — Ruth Margalit, The New Yorker, 25 Oct. 2021
  • Hazel worked for the Vapors as a shill player, gambling with house money to keep the tourists interested and the games going.
    — Krista Stevens, Longreads, 2 May 2012
  • The government claimed the crew used a variety of shill accounts to promote the main Tripwithscience brand.
    — Thomas Brewster, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2021
  • Well, to my eyes, Monbiot is swinging wildly with the charge of Brand being little more than a corporate shill.
    — Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 12 Nov. 2010
  • Some gurus are considered shills for giving positive reviews to stay in the good graces of beauty companies.
    — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 28 Aug. 2018
  • At least the gun-control lobby and their anti-Second Amendment shills are keeping the campaign to ban guns classy.
    — Nicole Gaudiano, USA TODAY, 11 May 2018
  • Trump will destroy his reputation and loose [sic] his entire base, shills and apologists included.
    — Kate Plummer, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 Oct. 2025
  • Among opponents, there is a long-standing assumption that anyone who promotes nuclear power must be a shill.
    — Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2021
  • Fortunately for the Warriors, Thompson heals faster than the preacher’s shill at a tent revival.
    — Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Feb. 2021
  • Their faces are plastered all over the Internet, people calling them shills, bobbleheads, and puppets.
    — Anonymous, Vox, 5 Apr. 2018
  • The real news here is Malignaggi, a Showtime analyst who will work the bout, is nothing more than a shill for the fight.
    — Tim Dahlberg, The Seattle Times, 5 Aug. 2017
  • When someone attempts to use the platform to spread misinformation or act as a shill, they are usually rejected.
    — Brianna Griff, Chron, 20 Feb. 2023
  • One of Hazel’s fellow shill players, a buddy of the club owner named Richard Dooley, watched Rowe like a hawk.
    — Krista Stevens, Longreads, 2 May 2012
  • For Dutton and his cowboy comrades, there’s no space in Montana for outsiders, and anyone who disagrees is a shill, scammer, or fool.
    — Daniel Bessner, The New Republic, 14 Nov. 2022
  • By no means was Law — no one’s idea of a Pads shill or ever a fanboy draftnik/farm booster — alone in touting the Pads’ youth movement.
    — Tom Krasovic, sandiegouniontribune.com, 11 June 2018
  • As Maupin tried to serve as a neutral mediator and allow the students to read statements of apologies, he was met with jeers from some students, who called him a shill for racists.
    — Richard Ruelas and, azcentral, 21 June 2019
  • Even the second-best theme-park shills in Orlando provided my kids with the joy of a lifetime, at least until the next outlandishly expensive trip.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 22 Aug. 2019

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