How to Use vilify in a Sentence

vilify

verb
  • He was vilified in the press for his comments.
  • Or not even just vilified, but made fun of.
    — Gerrick Kennedy, Rolling Stone, 20 Oct. 2025
  • He was vilified, he was called all sorts of names, soft and all sorts of things.
    — Nathaniel Cline, cleveland.com, 13 June 2017
  • My whole life, they had been vilified by my mom’s side of the family.
    — Jennifer Wolfgram, Los Angeles Times, 13 Mar. 2026
  • People who looked like him were now being vilified on screen.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 6 May 2025
  • They have been vilified by many of those on the right and patronized by many of those on the left.
    — Mike Bianchi, The Orlando Sentinel, 11 June 2025
  • Both women are Black and were vilified based on their race and gender.
    — Mike Hendricks, Kansas City Star, 11 July 2025
  • Gluten has been vilified in certain corners of the health and wellness world.
    — Hannah Yasharoff, USA Today, 28 July 2025
  • Judge Salas told us vilifying judges is eroding trust in the courts.
    — Heather Abbott, CBS News, 2 Mar. 2026
  • Judge Salas told us vilifying judges is eroding trust in the courts.
    — Heather Abbott, CBS News, 7 June 2026
  • She has been valorized and vilified in equal measure throughout her life.
    — Daniel Jonah Wolpert, NPR, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Hip-hop, along with the black and brown people who created it, has been vilified since its birth.
    — Jeneé Osterheldt, kansascity, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Netanyahu has been heckled by reservists and vilified in the press.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 28 Oct. 2023
  • Yet, while some of his deputies were vilified, Rosselló seemed to emerge unscathed.
    — Susan Miller, USA TODAY, 21 July 2019
  • But Lezra doesn’t vilify the subject.
    — Leia Mendoza, Variety, 25 Nov. 2025
  • They were vilified and at one point, homeless and unemployed.
    — James Brown, CBS News, 31 Oct. 2019
  • For decades, fat has been vilified as the worst part of the American diet.
    — Time, Time, 29 Sep. 2017
  • That means the political class has to back the police, not vilify them.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 5 Feb. 2022
  • Christ reduced to a potato chip, debased and vilified like two thousand years ago.
    — Harper's Magazine, 2 July 2024
  • When LeBron makes that pass the guy misses it, he gets vilified.
    — John Canzano, OregonLive.com, 18 Mar. 2018
  • Women are often vilified and condemned for the deaths of their male partners.
    — Lisawhill, Longreads, 9 July 2019
  • In fact, for your own and others’ health, please break anything close to a habit of vilifying this or that food or food choice.
    — Carolyn Hax, Detroit Free Press, 16 Dec. 2017
  • In turn, a small but vocal group of men has vilified women for these gains on their social media platforms.
    — Anne Branigin, Washington Post, 21 July 2024
  • Look at what happens to women in this country who have ambition and how they’re vilified.
    — Trey Williams, HollywoodReporter, 14 Dec. 2025
  • The boys, all between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time of their arrests, were vilified by the press.
    — Candice Benbow, Glamour, 30 May 2019
  • Some of those who dared to express even a whisper of relief at his death were vilified online and arrested.
    — Nabil Salih, Time, 26 May 2026
  • There's been a lot of interest recently in retelling the stories of women who were vilified by the press.
    — Chloe Foussianes, Town & Country, 30 Nov. 2019
  • But now Monahan would undertake a covert mission to meet the man his team had vilified.
    — Kate Kelly, New York Times, 10 June 2023
  • The top 1%, vilified by the columnist, pay 40% of all income taxes.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 9 July 2025
  • The Russian leader, for his part, has gone out of his way to vilify those who have left, likening them to gnat-like insects.
    — Vasiliy Kolotilov, Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr. 2022

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