How to Use surveil in a Sentence

surveil

verb
  • The stork took flight, did a loop to surveil the boat and perched on a lamppost near the bank.
    — Safak Timur Ivor Prickett, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2024
  • Gee did not clarify if its tech has been used to surveil immigrants.
    — Thomas Brewster, Forbes, 25 Nov. 2024
  • The mission was more than an effort to surveil Russian forces.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 27 Dec. 2021
  • Meanwhile, a new wave of digital tools has emerged to help surveil the surveillants.
    — Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2025
  • Employees must know these tools are being used, and that the goal is to support, not surveil.
    — Aytekin Tank, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2025
  • But getting close enough to surveil the Russians is a risky endeavor.
    — Sudarsan Raghavan, Anchorage Daily News, 21 May 2022
  • And officials may need to constantly surveil sewage or airports for signs of new pathogens.
    — Markus Anderljung and Paul Scharre, Foreign Affairs, 14 Aug. 2023
  • The rise of door cameras have led some homeowners to surveil those who take treats from their no-contact candy bowls.
    — Annie Atherton, Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2023
  • Their data and networks help the government surveil the public.
    — New York Times, 29 Apr. 2021
  • Security cameras and a drone will also be installed to surveil the area.
    — Fox News, 3 Dec. 2021
  • The public should determine what police officers use—and do not use—to surveil them.
    — Kristina Libby, Popular Mechanics, 12 June 2020
  • Can police legally surveil a huge swath of a city from the air, using software to track people’s movements?
    — Dwight Weingarten, The Christian Science Monitor, 23 Feb. 2021
  • For months, the state has relied not on state-of-the-art software, but thousands of spreadsheets to surveil the industry.
    — Evan Bush, The Seattle Times, 15 Feb. 2018
  • The only people who would be easy to surveil would be people who didn't care about government surveillance in the first place.
    — Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 4 Aug. 2019
  • Critics worry that the quieter, nimbler drones will be used to surveil the public with little oversight.
    — Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr. 2026
  • For years, executives have openly scoffed at the idea that their app could be used to surveil Americans.
    — Casey Newton, The Verge, 4 Jan. 2023
  • The idea is that the chips will allow the government and corporations to surveil people who get the vaccine.
    — John Keilman, chicagotribune.com, 15 Dec. 2020
  • The real question is whether a warrant is needed to surveil Americans.
    — Editorial Board, Washington Post, 4 May 2026
  • Many locals see them as a nuisance that take away jobs and surveil neighborhoods with their extensive array of cameras.
    — Frank Landymore, Futurism, 26 Mar. 2026
  • And yet at any single moment just about anyone with a smartphone has the ability to surveil millions of people across the globe.
    — Chris Hayes, The New Yorker, 24 Sep. 2021
  • Now, the men guard their towns from mountain watch posts and surveil 100 cartel gunmen camped out a few miles away using their own drones.
    — Megan Janetsky, Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2026
  • This is not the first time the Ethiopian government has been accused of using spyware to surveil critics.
    — Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 6 Dec. 2017
  • The platform is being used to surveil journalists and others, and report back to Beijing.
    — The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 23 Jan. 2025
  • Even electric vehicles and connected cars have been caught in the crosshairs, seen as a covert way to surveil Americans.
    — Bypaolo Confino, Fortune, 9 July 2024
  • And the worst thing that can happen is for people to open one up whose real purpose is not to protect an American, but to surveil them.
    — Time, 11 Dec. 2019
  • The hacker gets access to a victim’s smartphone data and can surveil them in real time with the phone’s microphone and camera.
    — Vanessa Gera, ajc, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Meanwhile, the privacy fears around Facebook have raised concerns about how Oculus will surveil its users.
    — Adi Robertson, The Verge, 30 Dec. 2018
  • There are trail cams and drones and night-vision goggles that could be used — perhaps illegally — to surveil the landscape in hopes of catching the hider.
    — Dave Orrick, Twin Cities, 19 Jan. 2017
  • The Navy was able to use advanced reconnaissance drones to surveil the ocean floor, and was able to easily locate the debris.
    — Justin Klawans, The Week, 7 Feb. 2023
  • Shadow fleets and dark vessels have turned the ocean into a security problem bigger than any one country can surveil by itself.
    — John Koetsier, Forbes.com, 30 June 2026

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