How to Use afflict in a Sentence

afflict

verb
  • The disease afflicts an estimated two million people every year.
  • Now the biggest threat to the country’s wildlife is poaching, the scourge that afflicts parks and reserves across Africa.
    Washington Post, 27 July 2019
  • Though Buck was still afflicted at the end of the hour, Minear confirms that Buck did break the curse.
    Andy Swift, TVLine, 24 Oct. 2024
  • Meanwhile, the disease of debt and fake ownership afflicts everyone.
    Hasan Zillur Rahim, The Mercury News, 3 July 2019
  • Fierce opposition to the construction of a new airport in Nantes afflicted the French government for years.
    Reuters, The Mercury News, 2 Aug. 2019
  • Apple also faces notable operational challenges in a world afflicted by trade conflicts—problems that its design prowess is ill-suited to solve.
    Dan Gallagher, WSJ, 28 June 2019
  • But on a night like last night where they were afflicted by so many injuries and are seemingly discombobulated, being able to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat is amazing.
    Mikai Bruce, Forbes, 24 Oct. 2024
  • Communities should provide for a better existence for people afflicted with psychiatric illness.
    Jack Bragen, The Mercury News, 11 July 2019
  • That last one seems to afflict the Twins more than most.
    Phil Miller, Star Tribune, 13 Aug. 2020
  • Cavazos, who’s younger brother committed suicide with a firearm, attributes the trend in part to the gun violence that has afflicted her community in Las Vegas.
    Alia Wong, The Atlantic, 9 Aug. 2019
  • The seizure is not the only calamity to afflict the dos Santos clan of late.
    The Economist, 9 Jan. 2020
  • And the hosts are making money from the downtime that afflicts most cars.
    Carlton Reid, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2024
  • This idea that this virus doesn't afflict children is not so.
    ABC News, 16 Oct. 2022
  • The list of Sky Islands birds afflicted by the loss of insects is long.
    Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 22 Sep. 2024
  • The crash was the second large air disaster to afflict Ukraine this year.
    Bloomberg.com, 26 Sep. 2020
  • Doctors race to find out what is afflicting them to save their lives.
    Hal Boedeker, orlandosentinel.com, 14 Nov. 2019
  • But this is not the sort of series that will leave evil unpunished or afflict the good with senseless tragedy.
    Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 14 Aug. 2024
  • The disease afflicts about 5,000 patients in the United States and causes rapid nerve cell loss in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.
    BostonGlobe.com, 7 Nov. 2019
  • The virus has afflicted tens of thousands of people worldwide and killed more than 1,300.
    Scientific American, 13 Feb. 2020
  • The number of folks afflicted in the U.S. is staggering and growing year by year.
    Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 24 Oct. 2024
  • The drug is the first medicine shown to slow progression of the disease, which afflicts some 6 million Americans.
    Ed Silverman, STAT, 11 July 2023
  • Guinea-Bissau is not the only place in west Africa to be afflicted by cocaine.
    The Economist, 21 Nov. 2019
  • Hagibis is the fourth major rainfall disaster to afflict Japan in the past 14 months; Tokyo was hit twice in less than 2 months.
    Dennis Normile, Science | AAAS, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Next door in Syria, fuel shortages afflict most of the country.
    Washington Post, 24 July 2021
  • Everyone is afflicted, and all are welcome in the church.
    Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 24 Dec. 2023
  • The discovery could lead the way to new treatments for a disease that afflicts millions of people.
    Jamie Ross, Washington Post, 20 June 2024
  • Or even one in which religion is soft and yielding, called to comfort, rather than afflict.
    Michelle Dowd, Time, 14 June 2023
  • Nearly two decades of warfare in Afghanistan have left people on all sides of the conflict afflicted with fear.
    Los Angeles Times, 12 Aug. 2019
  • The last pandemic to strike the world with such force was the Spanish flu, which started in 1918, primarily afflicting not the old but the young.
    Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024
  • What afflicts a program off the field will eventually seep into the product on the field.
    Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 28 June 2023

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