How to Use subjugate in a Sentence

subjugate

verb
  • The emperor's armies subjugated the surrounding lands.
  • It’s subjugated to a larger sense of what’s called the universal destination of all goods.
    — Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2026
  • How could the woman who wrote so piercingly about women’s subjugation subjugate herself to not just one but two men?
    — Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2025
  • Everflame is set in a world where mortals live in poverty, subjugated by an elite race known as the Descended.
    — Denise Petski, Deadline, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Not forcing her to go means hurting the other girl, forcing her to go means teaching your daughter that her own comfort should be subjugated to make someone else happy.
    — Hannah Sacks, PEOPLE, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Likewise, meekness once meant not becoming weak, but subjugating power to reason – not letting anger take control.
    — Timothy J. Pawl, The Conversation, 23 Feb. 2026
  • All expanded the Russian empire -- and subjugated the people and areas that now form Ukraine.
    — David Brennan, ABC News, 13 Aug. 2025
  • Its power-hungry men have made laws that subjugate women to follow an extreme set of laws that essentially gives the government total control of their bodies.
    — Taryn Finley, Refinery29, 7 Nov. 2025
  • But these moves and a little patience could help set the conditions for a resolution over time—one that doesn’t involve Russia destroying and subjugating its neighbor.
    — Thomas Wright, The Atlantic, 11 Nov. 2025
  • Putin began the year projecting confidence about his campaign to subjugate Ukraine, despite incremental progress on the battlefield.
    — Nathan Hodge, CNN Money, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Americans have been skeptical of brown-skinned people since the days of the Alamo, always fearful Latinos are one step away from insurrection and thus must always be subjugated.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Its propaganda revels in its desire to subjugate small European countries—and celebrates the idea America could soon join it to carve up the continent.
    — Peter Pomerantsev, Time, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Charlie was a champion of the Judeo-Christian coalition to save Western civilization from the forces of barbarism and Islamism that seek to subjugate us all.
    — Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Sep. 2025
  • This campy, reality-shifting comedy series questions what would happen if a flaming misogynist woke up in a world that was completely matriarchal and subjugated men based on their gender.
    — Madeleine Janz, PEOPLE, 30 Apr. 2026
  • The display features replicas of historical tools used to subjugate communities of color, including an interactive consensus that allows insight into how people would have been categorized over time.
    — Sophia Arndt, Twin Cities, 22 Nov. 2025
  • Roberts performs as Yale philosophy Professor Alma, the self-righteousness that dazzles in her eyes subjugates Edebiri as Maggie, her self-effacing star pupil.
    — Malik Peay, Essence, 9 Oct. 2025
  • However, once Hernán Cortés triumphed, the conquistadors went from waging war — vanquishing the Aztecs — to the project of subjugating Indigenous holdouts and building a self-sustaining territory loyal to the crown.
    — Foreign Correspondent, Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Its founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, established a religious dictatorship that subjugates the Iranian people under sharia law, while zealously exporting its dogma by force.
    — Elan Journo, Oc Register, 10 Mar. 2026
  • There’s her creative director, Celeste (filmmaker/actress Hailey Benton Gates), Charli’s friend and the only one with a foot in reality, but with no other purpose in life but to subjugate herself to her employer.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 24 Jan. 2026
  • The Spanish subjugated and enslaved the indigenous population of the Canaries—the Guanches—exporting some of them to Madeira or Europe, while others were forced to labor on Canarian sugar plantations.
    — Literary Hub, 23 Oct. 2025
  • In a country like India, subjugated early in the history of capitalist imperialism, and then bullied after independence by the West, a degree of self-renunciation and collective sacrifice was widely understood to be requisite to economic and political self-strengthening.
    — Wyatt Williams, Harpers Magazine, 2 June 2026

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