How to Use burn down in a Sentence

burn down

phrasal verb
  • He was killed in an explosion while allegedly attempting to burn down a house for the insurance money.
    Samantha Stutsman, People.com, 5 Oct. 2024
  • When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted or in Seattle?
    Maya Marchel Hoff, USA TODAY, 11 Sep. 2024
  • In the end, more than two-thirds of the city burned down.
    Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Nov. 2023
  • My house had just burned down and there was all this chaos.
    Ashley Cullins, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Yeah, [on] top of that, the kids were about to go to school but both their schools burned down.
    Staff Author, Peoplemag, 12 Aug. 2023
  • Two weeks after the killings, the crime scene — the Turner house — burned down.
    Corky Siemaszko, NBC News, 4 Apr. 2024
  • An apartment complex that burned down used to sit at the site.
    Stacy Ryburn, Arkansas Online, 18 Oct. 2023
  • The house was burned down days later and Williams’ body was never found.
    Armon Sadler, VIBE.com, 1 Aug. 2024
  • And then just a few weeks later, they were firebombed overnight, and one of the buildings burned down.
    Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News, 1 Feb. 2024
  • Friends and neighbors were trying to tell them that their house in Fort Worth had burned down.
    Hojun Choi, Dallas News, 13 Sep. 2023
  • The neighbor kid burned down your cherry, but the grapevine’s looking fine.
    Murr Brewster, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Aug. 2023
  • And think of Flock, who once imagined burning down her rapist’s store.
    Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2024
  • Cal Neva burned down in 1937 but was rebuilt in record speed.
    Alexandra E. Petri, Los Angeles Times, 15 Sep. 2023
  • But according to Civil Beat, the house next door was also made of the same wood – and burned down.
    Li Cohen, CBS News, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Well, there are still cities across America that were burnt down.
    Fox News Staff, Fox News, 5 May 2023
  • The Aztec theater burned down in the late 1950s, a historian told Williams; the lot has been vacant since.
    Sarah Blaskovich, Dallas News, 24 May 2023
  • According to the listing, the south wing of the house burned down in 1830 and was rebuilt some hundreds of years later.
    Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 10 May 2023
  • The teens are left standing in the snow watching their only shelter burn down, in the cold winter night.
    Quinci Legardye, Harper's BAZAAR, 30 May 2023
  • Watching closely, Hamas, an ally of Iran, chose to burn down the house, returning the group and its cause to the spotlight.
    Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2023
  • Chaos breaks out to end the clip as the city’s burning down, and Scott is launching grapes into the camera at the fusion restaurant.
    Michael Saponara, Billboard, 26 July 2024
  • The islanders, of course, are looking to get back to their homes to see if their pets are alive, to see if their house has completely burned down.
    Kimmy Yam, NBC News, 16 Aug. 2023
  • The passenger station burned down in 1904, and the freight depot suffered the same fate four years later.
    Richard Selcer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 24 Feb. 2024
  • Beside him was the brick chimney of a house that burned down decades ago, and below was the concrete dam that had formed Copco Lake.
    Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2024
  • In 2019, a home being built by Brooks Houck was burned down in what city officials said was an arson case.
    Rachel Smith, The Courier-Journal, 8 Sep. 2023
  • The original location burned down in the blazes that followed the 1906 earthquake.
    Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 12 July 2023
  • One of the homes that was created as part of the set for Tim Burton’s 2003 fantasy drama Big Fish has burnt down.
    Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 July 2023
  • Armed with machetes and pitchforks, these fighters seized a cache of muskets, then burned down a mansion.
    Boyce Upholt, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 June 2024
  • Local fire crews continue to work on stamping out the blaze and clean up efforts after the fire burned down 48 homes.
    oregonlive, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Then a fire broke out that burned down most of the set — except for Regan’s bedroom, the center of the film’s demonic activity.
    Katie Rife, EW.com, 13 Oct. 2024
  • The city sent firefighting equipment, and Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. donated barrels of beer — a good business move, too, since the city's breweries all burned down.
    Chris Foran, Journal Sentinel, 23 Sep. 2024

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