Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use harmful in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Harmful means causing or likely to cause harm or damage; injurious. Example: “Wear a hat to protect your skin from harmful sunlight.”

Examples of harmful by meaning

adjectiveCausing or likely to cause harm or damage; injurious.

  • Wear a hat to protect your skin from harmful sunlight.
  • Smoking is harmful to the lungs.
  • Burning fossil fuels is harmful to the environment.

More sentences with harmful

  • Thank God for modern remedies: the medievals were often useless or even harmful.From the entry medieval
  • I don't think you should hop on like those guys because it's harmful to your health.From the entry hop on
  • Sunscreen shields against the harmful effects of solar rays.From the entry shield
  • Factors known to encourage the growth of harmful bacteria inside cooling systems include the stagnation of the water.From the entry stagnation
  • The underprocessed food still contained harmful bacteria.From the entry underprocess
  • Using a delineator is an effective way to safely redirect traffic away from potentially harmful situations.2022, BARC Civil Engineering (CE) Exam Prep Book, page 121. From the entry delineator
  • Therefore, clinging to this illusion is not only pointless but potentially harmful.2022 August 6, Heather Hutchinson, “I'm Just a Rhetorical Dirtbag, Baby.”, in MacEwan University Student EJournal, volume 6, number 1, →DOI. From the entry dirtbag left
  • TL;DR: “Infohazard” means any kind of information that could be harmful in some fashion.[2020 February 2, eukaryote, “A point of clarification on infohazard terminology”, in LessWrong, archived from the original on 11 Dec 2022. From the entry cognitohazard
  • Anyone who leaves has committed “overts” (harmful acts) against the church and is withholding them.2019 October 17, Thomas C. Tobin, Joe Childs, “Part 1 — Scientology: The Truth Rundown”, in Tampa Bay Times. From the entry overt
  • The mosquito population is at its peak in June and they can carry many harmful diseases.2018 June 30, Matthew Cooper, “When insects attack: The worst bites and stings to avoid this summer”, in Manchester Evening News. From the entry mozzy
  • Although the vapor of EC is less harmful than tobacco smoke, EC are not hazard-free lifestyle products.2018 November 3, Jan Löhler, Barbara Wollenberg, “Are electronic cigarettes a healthier alternative to conventional tobacco smoking?”, in…. From the entry passive vaping
  • The difficulty is that fresh foods perish due to the multiplication in them of harmful bacteria.2015, Christopher Cumo, Foods that Changed History. From the entry perish
  • The current studies also imply that macrophages may play harmful roles in advanced GC.2015 July 31, “Macrophage Infiltration Induces Gastric Cancer Invasiveness by Activating the β-Catenin Pathway”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry protumoral
  • I am now convince it is more harmful to overparent than to underparent.2013, Steve Gilliland, Hide Your Goat: Strategies to Stay Positive When Negativity Surrounds You, page 70. From the entry underparent
  • It's the least obvious type but nevertheless very destructive and harmful.2012, Kathleen M. Reay, Toxic Divorce: A Workbook for Alienated Parents, →ISBN. From the entry underhanding
  • Dilution effect is distinct from a negative effect since there is no adverse or harmful influence.2009, Vasant Gowariker, V. N. Krishnamurthy, Sudha Gowariker, Manik Dhanorkar, Kalyani Paranjape, The Fertilizer Encyclopedia, John Wiley…. From the entry dilutory
  • Similar to eating-disorders, skin-lightening is an issue concerning body image with potential harmful consequences.2006 August, Christina Görke, “Introduction”, in An Exploratory Study of Advertising’s Role in Young Indian Women’s Desire to Be…. From the entry eating-disorder
  • An orphan isn't harmful in a language that has garbage collection, such as Java.2003, David D. Riley, The Object of Data Abstraction and Structures Using Java, page 234. From the entry orphan
  • These may contain filters manufactured without the use of harmful materials and may not require a dustbag.2002, Patrick W. Jordan, Designing Pleasurable Products, page 80. From the entry dustbag
  • There might be reinforcement of already harmful social evils such as heightism and racism.2001, James C. Peterson, Genetic Turning Points: The Ethics of Human Genetic Intervention. From the entry heightism
  • Caution: TBCS is harmful, and this procedure should be carried out in a fume hood.1995, Heddwyn Jones, Plant Gene Transfer and Expression Protocols, Humana Press, →ISBN, page 328, →ISBN. From the entry salinize
  • Our laboratory analysis indicated the fabric contained nothing that would normally be harmful or irritating.1949, Good Housekeeping, volume 129, International Magazine Company, page 25. From the entry plastic pants
  • Saline catharses deplete the system of body fluids and are particularly harmful in pregnancy.1926, G.P. Engelhard & Company (publisher), “News of The Medical World”, in The Medical Standard, volume 49, page 44. From the entry catharsis
  • Dr Allen said it could affect social cohesion and potentially drive harmful rhetoric around migration when Australia's population change was problematised.2024 September 19, Ahmed Yussuf, “Australia's population reaches 27 million with growth largely driven by overseas migration”, in ABC…. From the entry problematize
  • We found that the influence of mental health and ideology on harmful attitudes and beliefs was two-and-a-half times stronger than networking.2024 February 27, Andrew G. Thomas, “Incels Uncovered: How Potent Is the Black Pill?”, in Psychology Today. From the entry bidirectional
  • Full of bullies shamefully spouting harmful tips and this constant sense of superiority coming from all of them.2022, Remington M. Valdivia, quoting a Redditor, Unmuted: An intersectional approach to Latinx women with eating disorders (thesis)…. From the entry edtwt
  • Many Dark Academics are teenagers, and it is important that they do not develop harmful habits because of an aesthetic.2021 fall, Jacqueline Kipping, “Dark Academia”, in The Issue, volume 8, number 1, Nijmegen, Gelderland: USA Nijmegen, Radboud University…. From the entry dark academic
  • Current studies suggest that contextual factors indeed play a role in the extent to which phubbing is harmful.2020, Rich Ling et al., editors, The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Communication and Society, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 168. From the entry phubbing
  • Another possibility is to enlist a bacteriophage, a kind of virus, to hunt down and kill harmful bacteria for us.2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan (2020), page 54. From the entry bacteriophage
  • While adolescents are canny enough to hide their Juuls from you, they don't really believe that vaping is harmful.2018 December 18, Jan Hoffman, “How to Help Teenagers Quit Vaping”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company…. From the entry Juul
  • Nostalgia is unproductive at best, and harmful at worst.2017, Frank Cifaldi, quoted in Will Freeman, "Save And Continue", Develop, April 2017, page 14. From the entry gatekeepery
  • Overdiagnosis refers to diagnosis that does not benefit patients because the diagnosed condition is not a harmful disease in those individuals.2016 August, Wendy A. Rogers, Yishai Mintzker, “Getting clearer on overdiagnosis”, in Journal of evaluation in clinical practice. From the entry overdiagnosis
  • For soniferous otophysans, decreased auditory sensitivity is particularly harmful because it may reduce the capacity to detect acoustic signals from conspecifics.2015 September 24, “Stress and Auditory Responses of the Otophysan Fish, Cyprinella venusta, to Road Traffic Noise”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry otophysan
  • Each city, region and country has a specific Aeroir, or combination of potentially harmful elements, such as hydrocarbons, soot or sulfur.2015 November 23, Jeffrey Edalatpour, “Smog-Infused Meringues and Tacos Tell the Truth about the Air We Eat”, in KQED, archived from the…. From the entry aeroir
  • The creature became not only useless, but worse than useless—harmful, a curse to touch or merely to see—a pariah animal.2013, Marvin Harris, “The Abominable Pig”, in Food and Culture: A Reader, 3rd edition, New York City, →ISBN, pages 64–65. From the entry pariah
  • It’s telling queer people that they don’t exist, or that our stories aren’t worth telling, and it’s harmful.2013 October 7, Matthew Ellison, “Queerbaiting”, in Salient, volume 76, number 23, Victoria University of Wellington, page 39. From the entry queerbaiting
  • By definition TDIs are the maximum doses which are not harmful even when taken over the whole life.2005, Przemysław Mastalerz, The True Story of DDT, PCB, and Dioxin, Wydawnictwo Chemiczne, →ISBN, page 91. From the entry TDI

Meaning of harmful

  1. adjective Causing or likely to cause harm or damage; injurious.

Full definition of harmful

Questions about harmful in a sentence

How do you use harmful in a sentence?
Harmful is used as an adjective. For example: “Wear a hat to protect your skin from harmful sunlight.”
What is a short sentence with harmful?
“Smoking is harmful to the lungs.”
What does harmful mean?
Harmful means causing or likely to cause harm or damage; injurious.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harmful (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 harmful in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/harmful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.