Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use subterfuge in a sentence

17 example sentences · noun

Subterfuge means an indirect or deceptive device or stratagem; a blind. Refers especially to war and diplomatics. Example: “Overt subterfuge in a region nearly caused a minor accident.”

Examples of subterfuge by meaning

nounAn indirect or deceptive device or stratagem; a blind. Refers especially to war and diplomatics.

  • Overt subterfuge in a region nearly caused a minor accident.
  • Uncovered any subterfuge?2010, Clare Vanderpool, Moon Over Manifest, →ISBN, →OCLC
  • Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.2012 March, William E. Carter with Merri Sue Carter, “The British Longitude Act Reconsidered”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2...

More sentences with subterfuge

  • The company clocked onto her subterfuge and fired her for it.From the entry clock onto
  • “My dearest Nadja, you must be deucedly cross with me for my subterfuge.2021 October 28, Sam Johnson & Stefani Robinson & Paul Simms & Lauren Wells, “The Portrait” (24:50 from the start), in What We Do in the…. From the entry deucedly
  • And the key to informational struggle was maskirovka—subterfuge—the manipulation of the enemy's picture of reality.2018, Carl Miller, chapter 6, in The Death of the Gods […] , William Heinemann, →ISBN. From the entry maskirovka
  • All without any of the subterfuge and hackery required to do it with Java.2012, Seymour Bosworth, M. E. Kabay, Eric Whyne, Computer Security Handbook, page 57. From the entry hackery
  • They were devious war aims, and Allenby’s campaign was fought with a maximum of snare and subterfuge.1978, Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Part One, Chapter 9, p. 173. From the entry snare
  • But this was subterfuge to defeat the curiosity of a chance discoverer.1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 30. From the entry discoverer
  • To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven.1928, Montague Summers, chapter 3, in The Vampire, His Kith and Kin. From the entry recreant
  • “—and it is the most elegant form of subterfuge.” “Right—stop— your pedantics are seriously getting in the way of specifics.”2016, Thomas Corfield, The Alchemists Of Vra, Panda Books Australia, →ISBN. From the entry pedantics
  • To slip past censors, Chinese bloggers have become masters of comic subterfuge, cloaking their messages in protective layers of irony and satire.2011 October 26, Brook Larmer, “Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry ethos
  • It seemed to me a subterfuge to turn out an anthology of coming out stories which didn't have my story in it.1976 April 26, Jil Clark, Julia Penelope, Susan Wolfe, “The Politics of Language”, in Gay Community News, page 8. From the entry block
  • Those Klingons who infiltrate Federation space are bent less on outright destruction or even surprise attacks than on subterfuge, intelligence gathering, contacting malcontent groups, and other such missions.1986, William A. Barton et al., “The State of the Federation”, in Star Trek IV Sourcebook Update (Star Trek: The Role Playing Game)…. From the entry Klingonish
  • Hunting with hawks was superior to using the bow-and-arrow because man no longer needed stealth and subterfuge in his approach to quarry but could send his emissary instead.1980, William Mansell, Gary Low, North American birds of prey, page 166. From the entry venatically
  • As the alternative norms and counterevidences are uncovered, it is the evaluator's task to determine inconsistency, contradiction, and subterfuge, and then to render his own verdict.1975, Edward Kelly, “Curriculum Evaluation and Literary Criticism: Comments on the Analogy”, in Curriculum Theory Network, volume 5…. From the entry counterevidence
  • "Do they not sneakingly bestow on me their crass inability to do anything with their own misbegotten progeny, a subterfuge which I scornfully fub off on text-books?"1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 82. From the entry scornfully

Meaning of subterfuge

  1. noun An indirect or deceptive device or stratagem; a blind. Refers especially to war and diplomatics.
  2. noun Deception; misrepresentation of the true nature of an activity.

Full definition of subterfuge

Questions about subterfuge in a sentence

How do you use subterfuge in a sentence?
Subterfuge is used as a noun. For example: “Overt subterfuge in a region nearly caused a minor accident.”
What is a short sentence with subterfuge?
“Uncovered any subterfuge?”
What does subterfuge mean?
Subterfuge means an indirect or deceptive device or stratagem; a blind. Refers especially to war and diplomatics.

Source and license

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