How to Use truth serum in a Sentence

truth serum

noun
  • Sure, it was fueled by booze, but alcohol is as much a truth serum as anything else.
    — Mike Scott, NOLA.com, 30 Apr. 2018
  • That said, my guess is Kizer, given truth serum, would agree with Doug.
    — Bud Shaw, cleveland.com, 26 Dec. 2017
  • No law prohibits the use of truth serum, assuming the subject consents.
    — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 2 Oct. 2021
  • Short of a shot of truth serum, or a couple glasses of red wine, Brey’s never going to say.
    — Tom Noie, Indianapolis Star, 31 May 2020
  • In the early years of truth serum use, this reasoning prevailed in law enforcement.
    — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 2 Oct. 2021
  • Steve and Robin end up getting captured, tortured and injected in truth serum.
    — Abby Dupes, Seventeen, 26 May 2022
  • Now it was being recast as a kind of truth serum, a tool of deep personal introspection.
    — New York Times, 15 Nov. 2021
  • In a league too often sanitized by coachspeak, facial expressions might be our last great truth serum.
    — Zak Keefer, New York Times, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Curiously, leaving office seems to act as a kind of truth serum for GOP politicians.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 15 Jan. 2026
  • The question is unanswerable, leading many to conclude that any statement prompted by truth serum must be deemed illegitimate.
    — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 2 Oct. 2021
  • There were tests to see whether LSD could be used as a truth serum or possibly be sprayed on enemy troops as a kind of weapon of mass distraction.
    — Don Lattin, Slate Magazine, 3 Jan. 2017
  • What ultimately dissuaded her, Breen suspects, was the drug’s reputation as a truth serum.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 22 Jan. 2024
  • Whereas most pop songs utilize at least a modicum of gloss to conceal the thirstiest elements of the human condition, this thing sounded like it was shot full of caffeine and truth serum.
    — Chris Richards, Washington Post, 13 Mar. 2024
  • The assignment escalated into a deadly couple’s fight involving shootouts, bombs and knives culminating in a double dose of truth serum.
    — Meredith Woerner, Variety, 7 Aug. 2024
  • What Mitchell also does extraordinarily well is portray a man who unintentionally uses liquor as a truth serum of sorts.
    — Andreas Hale, The Root, 9 Feb. 2018
  • There’s truth serum involved, as well as an elementary-school yearbook, an interrupted road trip, too many coincidences, and a connection to a horrific crime.
    — Vulture Editors, Vulture, 27 Aug. 2021
  • The beauty that Frankie and her entourage find in the settings and outings of Sintra acts on them like a drug—not an intoxicant that lulls them into contented complacency but a kind of truth serum.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 25 Oct. 2019
  • And while part of that is the bitter swig of truth serum that the better team won, another part is that this was a breakthrough season and a harbinger of better days ahead for K-State under Weber.
    — Vahe Gregorian, kansascity, 24 Mar. 2018
  • Another veteran, however — Mike Conley — came into his media session apparently dosed with truth serum.
    — Eric Walden, The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The #nofilter Moussa can be disarmingly childlike and offensively straightforward, and Bouajila plays him like a zombie who’s been injected with too much truth serum.
    — Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 Sep. 2022
  • At the novel’s start, Leo Kall, the inventor of the titular truth serum, is a belligerent proponent of the supremacy of the state and the relative meaninglessness of the individual.
    — Talya Zax, The New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Amazingly, not one of these very smart bobble heads is an actual conservation biologist, who would, if he or she was given truth serum, have said that our most noble, high-minded environmental law is an unmitigated failure.
    — Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 26 Apr. 2011
  • There are truth serums disguised as cafecitos, herbs with magical powers, prayer altars and characters hailing from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina.
    — Meg Medina, New York Times, 1 June 2018
  • An effective truth serum has never been scientifically proved, but that hasn’t stopped various intelligence and law enforcement agencies from slipping subjects a cocktail’s worth of different substances in an attempt to increase their truthfulness.
    — Erik Ofgang, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Aug. 2024

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