Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use discriminate in a sentence

31 example sentences · verb, adjective

Discriminate means to make distinctions. Example: “Since he was color blind he was unable to discriminate between the blue and green bottles.”

Examples of discriminate by meaning

verbTo make distinctions.

  • Since he was color blind he was unable to discriminate between the blue and green bottles.

verbTo treat or affect differently, depending on differences in traits.

  • Low self-esteem can affect both rich and poor people: it doesn't discriminate.

verbTo make decisions harmful to (a person or group) based on prejudice.

  • The law prohibits discriminating against people based on their skin color.
  • The Office for Civil Rights said that it sent letters under its authority to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans any institution receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin.2025 March 10, Karina Tsui and Elizabeth Wolfe, “Department of Education investigating 60 colleges and universities over antisemitism...

verbTo infringe upon (a person's rights) in a prejudicial manner.

  • The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children's rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community.1977 January 19, Anita Bryant, quotee, “Bias Against Homosexuals Is Outlawed in Miami”, in The New York Times, page 14
  • There's also expected to be a ruling out of Washington over Texas' efforts to impose a restrictive new voter law that many minority groups allege discriminates against their right to vote.2012 August 28, “Federal court finds discrimination in new Texas voting maps”, in CBS News, archived from the original on 20 Jul 2019
  • Under the RHA, a person can sue the State of Illinois or local governments like cities and counties if they improperly deny, interfere with, or discriminate against the person’s fundamental rights to make their own reproductive health decisions.2019 June 20, “Illinois Reproductive Health Act FAQ”, in ACLU Illinois, archived from the original on 06 Jul 2019

More sentences with discriminate

  • The Romani have long been discriminated against.From the entry Romani
  • Microtargeting has also enabled advertisers to discriminate in ways that are hard for regulators to catch.2023 April 6, Julia Angwin, “If It’s Advertised to You Online, You Probably Shouldn’t Buy It. Here’s Why.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry microtargeting
  • Within China, Wuhanese have become feared and discriminated against because of the epidemic.2020 May 15, Yuan Yang, “Letter from China: Sichuan goes with the flow”, in Financial Times. From the entry Wuhanese
  • People often discriminate against others who are stupid, ignorant, rude, smally, drunk, drug addled, violent, or criminals.2020, Jon Robins, Ian Tinny, Bernie Sanders, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro & Other Socialists, page 383. From the entry stupidism
  • Interestingly, we found that these time-resolved metabotypes were discriminated into five distinct clusters.2015 December 8, “Metabolomic Responses of Guard Cells and Mesophyll Cells to Bicarbonate”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry metabotype
  • Why do you try to keep me out, why do you discriminate against me?1995, Steven DeBonis, Children of the enemy: oral histories of Vietnamese Amerasians and their mothers, McFarland, page 125. From the entry Amerasian
  • By contrast they have a whole flock of words to discriminate the various degrees of intoxication.1949, Charles Graves, Ireland Revisited, page 20. From the entry stocious
  • According to Schmitz, the "squeaky wheel system" severely limits consumers’ rights because it discriminates against consumers based on their socioeconomic status.2013, “Schmitz Explains Squeaky Wheel System at Scott Lecture”, in Colorado Law. From the entry squeaky wheel system
  • With these facts in mind, I rest my case, that Arun Gupta is a religist, whose opinions discriminate against Muslims.1993 November 16, Javed Ahmed Khan, “Arun Gupta's mental experiment”, in soc.culture.pakistan (Usenet). From the entry religist
  • English gentlemen, after all, do not discriminate against each other on the grounds of parentage, only of breeding.1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy. From the entry parentage
  • I'm broadminded and understanding of the struggle of your organization because as a prisoner I've been discriminated against myself.1980 April 12, Larry McDonald, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, page 19. From the entry broad-minded
  • Often a prooflistener could clearly discriminate the words after repeated listening to a passage which the transcriber had previously found unintelligible.1979, Hartvig Dahl, “Characteristics of the Corpus”, in Word Frequencies of Spoken American English, Essex, Conn.; Aylesbury…. From the entry prooflistener
  • Caesar may discriminate unjustly against certain races.1957, Awake, volume 38, number 14, page 6. From the entry caesar
  • He has already helped refute “racism” by publicly demonstrating that many BLMers are discriminated against because of “stupidism” (widespread bias against stupidity), not racism.2023, Christina Antioch, Etienne de la Boetie2, Robert L. Peters, HITLER: do you self-identify the same as Hitler?. From the entry stupidism
  • We do not discriminate against women.2014 September 26, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Slyvia Zhang, “For Shanghai Jobs, Only ‘Normal Size’ Need Apply”, in The New York Times, New York…. From the entry Fengxian
  • The available evidence does not support the use of la belle indifférence to discriminate between conversion symptoms and symptoms of organic disease.2006, Stone J, Smyth R, Carson A, Warlow C. La belle indifférence in conversion symptoms and hysteria: Systematic review. British Journal…. From the entry la belle indifference
  • Their potentially visible occurrence in encounter type groups probably varies widely, and is not often discriminated unless in groups literally composed of couples.1998, Godfrey T Barrett-Lennard, Carl Rogers' Helping System: Journey & Substance, →ISBN, page 162. From the entry quadral
  • Fat people are heavily discriminated against.1982, Sue Grafton, A is for Alibi. From the entry tubbo
  • This study hypothetizes that institutional policy making, intentionally or otherwise, has discriminated against certain farm crops, thus introducing an imbalance into the economy.1980, Edinaldo Gomes Bastos, Farming in the Brazilian Sertao: Social Organization and Economic Behavior. From the entry hypothetize
  • Lederer and Jackson use a similar system of labels to discriminate the happiest ("the heavenly twins") from the unhappiest marriages ("the gruesome twosome" ) .1975, Heather L. Ross, Isabel V. Sawhill, Anita R. MacIntosh, Time of Transition: The Growth of Families Headed by Women, page 39. From the entry gruesome twosome
  • Abbott argued that the maps were drawn to help Republicans maintain power but not to discriminate, and that drawers did not know where district offices were located.2012 August 28, Manny Fernandez, “Federal Court Finds Texas Voting Maps Discriminatory”, in NYTimes.com. From the entry drawer
  • Society discriminates against people of size." The phrase is bottomed on people of color, an 18th-century term for "nonwhites" enjoying new popularity among those not pigmentally deprived.1993, William Safire, Mangled Metaphors. From the entry bottom on
  • A person must not discriminate by failing to supply superannuation or insurance, or in the terms on which, or in the way in which superannuation or insurance is supplied.1991, John Godwin, Michael Costa, Julie Hamblin, Mark Duffy, David Patterson, Australian HIV/AIDS Legal Guide, page 465. From the entry superannuation
  • The kingdom's legitimacy derives from the Wahhabi sect of Islam, a Sunni Muslim group that attacked Shiite shrines in Iraq in the nineteenth century, and today systematically discriminates against Shias.2012, Satish, “New book on Shias by Hamid Dabashi”, in soc.culture.iranian (Usenet). From the entry Shiaphobia

Meaning of discriminate

  1. verb To make distinctions.
  2. verb To treat or affect differently, depending on differences in traits.
  3. verb To make decisions harmful to (a person or group) based on prejudice.

Full definition of discriminate

Questions about discriminate in a sentence

How do you use discriminate in a sentence?
Discriminate is used as a verb and adjective. For example: “Since he was color blind he was unable to discriminate between the blue and green bottles.”
What is a short sentence with discriminate?
“Fat people are heavily discriminated against.”
What does discriminate mean?
Discriminate means to make distinctions.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: discriminate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use discriminate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/discriminate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.