How to Use venal in a Sentence

venal

adjective
  • That entire ecosystem comes after and targets you in the most venal way.
    — Milton Guevara, NPR, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Still, my father-in-law said Castellano was venal and brutal.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 5 Nov. 2019
  • America is, at its core, a nasty, venal, selfish and racist culture.
    — Jason Johnson, The Root, 24 May 2017
  • Murder, rape, arson, the whole catalogue of venal and deadly deeds.
    — Daniel Burke, CNN, 8 Oct. 2017
  • The wager at the root of the story is designed to reflect the venal hollowness of the upper class.
    — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov. 2024
  • Yet, Trump’s words can’t simply be dismissed as venal or his usual hyperbole.
    — Trudy Rubin, Twin Cities, 9 Feb. 2025
  • Pay is low, graft is rife and hospitals are often run by venal political appointees.
    — The Economist, 16 Dec. 2020
  • Britons went to India for many reasons, both venal and altruistic.
    — David Gilmour, WSJ, 22 Feb. 2019
  • He was praised as a can-do, pro-business pragmatist who would wipe clean and shape up a government widely seen as venal and rotten.
    — The Economist, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Like all of us, museums are stitched tight into the fabric of a messy, venal, Darwinian world.
    — Holland Cotter, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2020
  • Katumbi believes that the country has been dismantled by venal politicians.
    — Nicolas Niarchos, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Its politicians have raced to outdo one another in venal, attention-grabbing rhetoric.
    — Thomas Rogers, The New York Review of Books, 31 Mar. 2021
  • And thus does the demonization of fashion play on; its role as shorthand for all that is morally corrupt and venal in the world continues.
    — New York Times, 27 May 2021
  • All of a sudden, the rationale behind a continental super league does not seem quite so brazenly venal.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 3 Feb. 2023
  • The fear of being shaken down by venal bureaucrats and taxmen remains a powerful reason to stay below the radar.
    — The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018
  • There is an unmistakable feeling that a great mass of fans are priced out, or fenced out, while wealthy sponsors and venal bureaucrats get the benefits.
    — Louisa Thomas, New Yorker, 13 June 2026
  • The press, the political class, and both major parties have proved to be sclerotic, venal, and shortsighted.
    — The Editors, National Review, 4 July 2024
  • His success at his new job leads to moral dilemmas and encounters with the company’s venal boss, played by Armie Hammer.
    — Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Unbeknownst to them all, the Trenchards' venal staff plot with enemies to undo the family in exchange for some coin.
    — Robyn Bahr, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Apr. 2020
  • At the other end of the moral spectrum is Morton, treading the line between compromised, guilty mother and venal fortune hunter.
    — Viv Groskop, Newsweek, 21 Mar. 2017
  • Venal politicians continue sucking the blood of the Republic.
    — John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 1 June 2017
  • The labor camp overseer at first seems sympathetic to Hodel, only to reveal an abusive, venal nature.
    — Jean Zimmerman, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2017
  • One argued that what Janis took to be a herd mentality might just as well be seen as deliberate, venal compliance.
    — David Merritt Johns, The Atlantic, 2 Nov. 2025
  • Bill Nighy plays a venal spycraft master who also is surprisingly good at computer coding.
    — Mark Kennedy, Boston Herald, 29 Jan. 2026
  • The venal glee Lithgow takes from his character belittling Beatriz.
    — Chris Hewitt, Twin Cities, 14 June 2017
  • Of all the film’s street slime, the corporation is surely Robocop‘s most venal, despicable monster.
    — Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 July 2022
  • Despite a subplot about a venal local politician, there is never much sense of Boksoon interacting with the civilian world.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 28 Mar. 2023
  • The story situates Matty as a smooth and cunning figure, several miles ahead of Ned’s venal legal mind.
    — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2022
  • But all along a toxic combination of venal Post Office management and a faulty computer system was to blame.
    — John Arlidge, airmail.news, 11 May 2024
  • The anti-hero of his book is Sammy Glick, a venal go-getter who leapfrogs from copy boy to agent to producer by stealing credit and backstabbing friends.
    — Thomas Doherty, HollywoodReporter, 20 Apr. 2025

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