How to use sabotage in a sentence
29 example sentences · noun, verb
Sabotage means a deliberate action aimed at weakening someone (or something, a nation, etc) or preventing them from being successful, through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. Example: “The railway line had been sabotaged by enemy commandos.”
Examples of sabotage by meaning
verbTo deliberately destroy or damage something in order to prevent it from being successful.
- The railway line had been sabotaged by enemy commandos.
- Our plans were sabotaged.
- He arrived at Yenbo in December, 1916, and immediately started his campaign to sabotage the railway, but to keep it sufficiently in working order to allow supplies to reach Medina.1956 March, R. C. Blaker, “The Hedjaz Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 166-167
More sentences with sabotage
- He revealed himself to be a cold-blooded calculator out to sabotage his colleagues.From the entry calculator
- In January, two other popular modules called colors and faker were intentionally sabotaged by their maintainer.2022 March 19, Lucian Constantin, “Developer sabotages own npm module prompting open-source supply chain security questions”, in CSO…. From the entry protestware
- But there are plenty of ways you could be sabotaging that savings.2014 August 6, Melanie Hicken, “5 big retirement mistakes”, in CNN Money, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2025. From the entry surefire
- The old state-controlled unions mounted public sector strikes that further sabotaged the economy and annoyed people.2013 August 23, Jonathan Steele, “The west has little influence in Egypt”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 11, archived from…. From the entry shortage
- STG operators work in independent cells, performing dangerous missions such as counter-terrorism, infiltration, reconnaissance, assassination, and sabotage.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Salarians: Special Tasks Group Codex entry. From the entry cell
- What possible reason would anyone have for sabotaging your parachute, tovarich?2007, David Michaels, Daniel Brenton, Red Moon, page 251. From the entry tovarich
- Its purpose was to sabotage de Gaulle’s efforts to remove French rule from Algeria.2001, Ben Abro et al., Assassination! July 14, University of Nebraska, page 193. From the entry OAS
- Well-meaning engineers and project leaders try to bankrupt the company, while I try to sabotage their programs.2000, Rick Fleeter, The Logic of Microspace, page 291. From the entry Dilbertian
- Defiance-based paradox is employed so that the family will actively oppose and deliberately sabotage the prescription.1988, Martin Lakin, Ethical Issues in the Psychotherapies, →ISBN, page 103. From the entry paradox
- The factory where she worked was a poisonous mass of incompetence, favoritism, and sabotage.1974, Ursula Leguin, The Dispossessed. From the entry incompetence
- And for the EU a Johnson premiership would mean “a mini-Trump across the Channel, dedicated to its sabotage”.2019 June 13, Jon Henley, “'Mini-Trump across the Channel': EU media on Boris Johnson as British PM”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry johnson
- As Abbey notes, in denouncing terrorism but defending ecotage, ‘sabotage is violence against inanimate objects: machinery and property.2013, Elizabeth Bomberg, David Schlosberg, editors, Environmentalism in the United States: Changing Conceptions of Activism, Routledge…. From the entry ecotage
- They may "defend" themselves individually, like trying to sabotage an acquaintance who is doing better financially, socially, etc.2010 February 10, “Re: Do economics and morals have anything in common?”, in alt.politics.libertarian (Usenet), retrieved 29 Nov 2021. From the entry authoritah
- She secretly wanted to sabotage the typical tall, thin, and gorgeous stereotype of the superficial dance team member.2009, David Luck, Too Fat to Dance. From the entry danceline
- The fire was officially attributed to sabotage.1997 January 5, Reuters, “Hong Kong to Build Port At Site of Sunken Liner”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the…. From the entry Tsing Yi
- Retribution was savage after Lu Xianwen denounced this as ‘sabotage of production’ and demanded the punishment of offenders.1996, Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, The Free Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 117. From the entry Pingyu
- Similarly, she misreads her one black colleague, Pompey, whom she wrongly believes has sabotaged the elevator she is accused of having misinspected.2020, Stephanie Brown, Éva Tettenborn, Engaging Tradition, Making It New, page 146. From the entry misread
- Together, the Masons craft a new algorithm to make an end-run around Axe’s sabotage — or so they want him to believe.2019 March 31, Sean T. Collins, “‘Billions’ Season 4, Episode 3: Hurts So Good”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11…. From the entry algo
- What's he been, sabotaging Egypt's infrastructure?2013, Jon Stewart, 'Morsi "Viva Hate"', The Daily Show 2013-04-01. From the entry unemploy
- It involves using sarcasm, gossip, teasing, sharing secrets, pouting, or obstructive acts such as forgetting to give someone a message or sabotaging group efforts.2012, Kathleen M. Reay, Toxic Divorce: A Workbook for Alienated Parents, →ISBN. From the entry underhanding
- Blondel needn’t have been so concerned about Tisza’s negotiations as Hungarians hostile to Romanian demands were themselves sabotaging any efforts to offer concessions.2003, The South Slav Journal, volume 24, Dositey Obradovich Circle, page 22. From the entry Romano-
- By the reverse token, in opera, where music is primary, the composer’s intent is hard to sabotage by even the willfullest mind.1978, Ned Rorem, “A Cultured Winter”, in An Absolute Gift: A New Diary, New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, part two, page 142. From the entry willful
- Sabotage being itself a warful act and carrying its own penalty, would not excuse the original unwarful act nor any subsequent unwarful acts of counter-retaliation.1943, Linus R. Fike, No nation alone: a plan for organized peace, page 56. From the entry warful
- What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. I & II. From the entry ruling class
- The county CCP committee looked into the matter and held that this was a new trend by a handful of class enemies attempting to sabotage spring farming."[1972 May 4 [1972 May 2], “Kweichow Regional Conference on Agricultural Tasks”, in Daily Report: People's Republic of China, volume I…. From the entry Ceheng
- But I do quarrel with those who under the guise of friendship for labor assume the role of infracaninophiles and then proceed to sabotage everything that means anything to labor.1940, Michael J. Bradley, National Labor Relations Act: hearings before the Special Committee to Investigate National Labor Relations…. From the entry infracaninophile
Meaning of sabotage
- noun A deliberate action aimed at weakening someone (or something, a nation, etc) or preventing them from being successful, through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction.
- verb To deliberately destroy or damage something in order to prevent it from being successful.
Questions about sabotage in a sentence
- How do you use sabotage in a sentence?
- Sabotage is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The railway line had been sabotaged by enemy commandos.”
- What is a short sentence with sabotage?
- “Our plans were sabotaged.”
- What does sabotage mean?
- Sabotage means a deliberate action aimed at weakening someone (or something, a nation, etc) or preventing them from being successful, through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sabotage (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.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “How to use sabotage in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/sabotage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
