How to Use virulent in a Sentence

virulent

adjective
  • The country seemed to be returning to the virulent nationalism of its past.
  • This makes black spot less virulent in the dry summer months.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Apr. 2023
  • By then we could be faced with more virulent forms of the disease swirling around the globe.
    — Zoe Cormier, Scientific American, 20 Jan. 2021
  • Much of it is virulent; most of it is never seen by the public.
    — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 4 Jan. 2021
  • But their hatred was no less virulent for its being mired in the past.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024
  • But their hatred was no less virulent for its being mired in the past.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024
  • The inmate had a virulent strain of herpes that left him writhing in pain.
    — Danny Robbins, ajc, 11 Oct. 2017
  • But the state quickly lost ground to the virulent delta variant.
    — Joe Mahr, chicagotribune.com, 27 Feb. 2022
  • But there is no law of nature that says a virus must always evolve to become less virulent.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 14 Mar. 2022
  • More than two-thirds of cases are of the more virulent pneumonic form.
    — Heather Leighton, Houston Chronicle, 26 Oct. 2017
  • But the campaign against them was so vicious and virulent they didn’t get elected.
    — Katie Kilkenny, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2020
  • This didn’t work with such a virulent disease that started spreading around the world.
    — Elanah Uretsky, The Conversation, 23 Nov. 2020
  • There is no law of nature that says a virus has to evolve to be less virulent, Barry says.
    — Josh Fischman, Scientific American, 4 Mar. 2022
  • But while outbreaks of tech dystopias come and go, there’s something more virulent about the current strain.
    — Larry Downes, Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2017
  • To these has been added an outbreak of virulent antisemitism.
    — John Ellis, WSJ, 4 Dec. 2023
  • That genetic effect has raised concerns that the drug could spur more virulent strains of the virus.
    — Matthew Perrone, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Nov. 2021
  • When the pla gene was in its original, high copy number, the disease was much more virulent.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 29 May 2025
  • But the scandal has returned to plague Mr Abe again, in a more virulent form.
    — The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Having one strain of dengue fever, for instance, doesn’t guarantee that the next one will be less virulent.
    — Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, 30 Mar. 2020
  • If the pathogen is present and virulent but the rose is resistant to the pathogen, disease will not develop.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Apr. 2023
  • In 2015, a virulent avian flu outbreak nearly wiped out his flock.
    — David Klepper, ajc, 17 May 2022
  • But Delta was about twice as virulent as the initial iteration of the virus.
    — Clayton Dalton, The New Yorker, 21 Jan. 2022
  • This is objectively true, and even the most virulent Kyle stan cannot object.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 10 Dec. 2024
  • The House has become its own special petri dish, breeding the most virulent strain of what ails the broader party.
    — Dan Balz, Anchorage Daily News, 5 Jan. 2023
  • The more virulent kind seems to come from the right, which tends to dwell in the more lurid conspiracy theories and more outlandish claims.
    — CBS News, 16 Dec. 2020
  • The coronavirus so far has shown to be less virulent than SARS.
    — Patrick Thomas, WSJ, 29 Jan. 2020
  • But then reality, in the form of a deadly, virulent virus spreading across the planet, changed all of our lives in ways both small and large.
    — oregonlive, 8 Apr. 2021
  • Grooms Lee, the city's young marshal (chief of police), was home in bed, suffering from dengue fever, a virulent form of the flu.
    — Skip Hollandsworth, Esquire, 5 Apr. 2016
  • The proposal made news around the globe but the response in the German media was notably virulent.
    — Lisa Rose, CNN, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Omicron was the first version of that, and there is this sort of adage that 'well, over time, viruses evolve to be less virulent,' but that's not really true.
    — Compiled Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, Arkansas Online, 21 Feb. 2022

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