How to Use smuggle in a Sentence

smuggle

verb
  • The paintings had been smuggled out of the country before the war.
  • We smuggled his favorite sandwich past the nurse.
  • He was arrested for smuggling drugs into the country.
  • They smuggled immigrants across the border.
  • Is smuggling ants worth the risk?
    — Janet Loehrke, USA Today, 15 May 2026
  • They were smashed up and came to me and asked me to smuggle out some tapes.
    — David Marchese David Marchese, New York Times, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The students had smuggled beer on board and didn’t sleep much.
    — Palko Karasz, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2019
  • The three-man smuggling crew shot the guard with a rubber bullet and fled.
    — Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, 6 Sep. 2018
  • Why, from your point of view, is smuggling itself not the problem?
    — Lisa Deaderick, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 May 2024
  • They are bought abroad, smuggled in and traded on the black market.
    — John Ruwitch, NPR, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Marcos said he’s been smuggling migrants for six years and won’t stop — at least in the short term.
    — Gabe Gutierrez, NBC News, 20 Feb. 2025
  • Gotta love Rachel trying to smuggle rice out of the challenge, though.
    — Nick Caruso, TVLine, 25 Sep. 2024
  • The portal is used to smuggle drugs into Spain.
    — Annika Pham, Variety, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Agents allege in court documents that its planes were used to smuggle drugs.
    — Beth Warren, The Courier-Journal, 8 June 2021
  • His throne room is a concrete box; his scepter a smartphone smuggled in to his confines.
    — Rhea Mogul, CNN Money, 7 Oct. 2025
  • To smuggle the dope gift past the guards, the man stuffed the weed—wrapped in a rubber balloon—up his nose.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2019
  • My friends, who were white, started smuggling in nip bottles and pinch-hitters.
    — Michael Thomas, New Yorker, 19 July 2025
  • That night, she’s smuggled to some maritime border, where June waits to take her home.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 27 May 2026
  • Much of this contraband had been smuggled in by drones that drop off items in prison yards, often overnight.
    — Perry Stein, Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Another video showed the volunteers smuggling in food killed and dumped in a ditch.
    — Yousra Elbagir, Time, 25 Feb. 2026
  • So in the worst sieges in Syria, people could smuggle themselves in and out.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2025
  • The mortars are believed to have been smuggled from Libya through Egypt.
    — Fares Akram, The Seattle Times, 25 Mar. 2019
  • The warden’s high-stakes deal is for Murphy to smuggle gold out of a remote mine.
    — Erik Pedersen, Deadline, 25 June 2026
  • First, the parts were smuggled into the country and the drones were assembled.
    — Harry Law, Time, 5 June 2025
  • It was smuggled out of prison and later published by Narayanrao.
    — Vikram Sampath, Quartz India, 20 Aug. 2019
  • When the lawyers tried to seize the studio’s assets, Chaplin smuggled the film to a safe place.
    — Katherine Yamada, Glendale News-Press, 5 Sep. 2019
  • The cameras made the evils of usury, stealing and smuggling visible.
    — Richard Vokes, Quartz Africa, 30 June 2019
  • Some mines are run by warlords who work with rogue members of the Congolese army to smuggle the coltan out.
    — The Economist, 23 Jan. 2021
  • But the bus driver was a coyote, a person who helps smuggle migrants across the border.
    — Justice Amick, Indianapolis Star, 22 Aug. 2019
  • The prisoners who snapped them took great risks to steal and smuggle cameras, and to hide the rolls of film after they were shot.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 5 Aug. 2022

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