How to Use deniability in a Sentence

deniability

noun
  • The risk is that a U.S. drone could be shot down, but there are ways of preserving U.S. deniability.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Mar. 2022
  • The strategy allows for deniability on the part of labs, who sell the peptides to the clinics at cost.
    Lindsay Gellman, Longreads, 22 Mar. 2018
  • But for most of the past four decades, they’ve been expressed in coded terms, with a degree of deniability.
    Jamelle Bouie, Slate Magazine, 22 May 2017
  • The fact that the attacks are blamed on private firms gives Putin a veneer of deniability.
    Stephen Collinson, CNN, 7 June 2021
  • And in the process, Trump has abandoned the plausible deniability that once served him so well.
    Noah Rothman, National Review, 27 Mar. 2023
  • The theme of the day Wednesday for the New York Jets: plausible deniability.
    Ben Volin, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Aug. 2023
  • And if Iran wanted to kill Americans, any of those groups could do that on its behalf, with some deniability, said the experts.
    Ken Dilanian, NBC News, 21 June 2019
  • But Western experts say this deniability is part of the point.
    Brad Lendon, CNN, 12 Aug. 2023
  • The way the item looks, there's still some plausible deniability.
    Marcus Jones, EW.com, 19 Oct. 2021
  • Cissy’s confession gives him some deniability, so that he’s not put in jail for that.
    Hilary Lewis, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Apr. 2023
  • How much deniability can any of them really lay claim to?
    Kevin Sullivan, Robb Report, 24 Oct. 2021
  • This provides a measure of plausible deniability for actions that the Kremlin does not want to be linked to publicly.
    Andrew Higgins, New York Times, 1 June 2017
  • Hillary Clinton is a sharp politician who knows the fine art of plausible deniability.
    Kirsten West Savali, The Root, 4 Nov. 2017
  • Wagner's forces have been used as the tip of the spear in Syria, but their shadowy presence affords Moscow a degree of deniability.
    Sebastian Shukla and Jomana Karadsheh, CNN, 21 July 2021
  • To maintain plausible deniability, this time, Price is being left in the dark.
    Abigail Tracy, The Hive, 17 Jan. 2017
  • And if the message is delivered by the personal lawyer, then the president's got some deniability there.
    NBC News, 21 Nov. 2019
  • Any big shot with half a brain knows the importance of plausible deniability.
    T.a. Frank, The Hive, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Maybe his advisers cooked something up but kept him out of the loop for plausible deniability.
    Matt Ford, New Republic, 24 Jan. 2018
  • We've also been stripped of our deniability, Poland said.
    Grace Hauck, USA TODAY, 22 Apr. 2020
  • In Joanie’s room, Flora drops her wrap and unbuttons her corset in a practiced way that aims to seduce while maintaining deniability.
    Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 20 Dec. 2021
  • Putin will probably get away with deniability on sports doping, even though nobody with a brain believes it.
    Mercury News Editorial Board, The Mercury News, 2 Jan. 2017
  • This was less of a purge than an attempt to maintain plausible deniability.
    Timothy Shenk, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2022
  • The botched nerve-agent attack, since exposed, was supposed to have been accomplished with deniability.
    Kenneth Roth, CNN, 19 Apr. 2021
  • So too, the way Mr Trump seems to have used Mr Cohen as a blunt instrument, while keeping him at arm’s length for plausible deniability, is a familiar pattern.
    The Economist, 22 Mar. 2018
  • Whether Fisher was being truthful or practicing the art of plausible deniability is in the eye of the beholder.
    Mike Rodak | Mrodak@al.com, al, 7 June 2022
  • Huawei hid its connection to Skycom, using it as a cutout to do business in Iran with plausible deniability.
    Jerry Dunleavy, Washington Examiner, 23 Mar. 2021
  • But at least then there was a veneer of plausible deniability.
    Erika D. Smith Columnist, Los Angeles Times, 4 Nov. 2020
  • By shuffling money from one group to another until one of them finally spends it, candidates and donors alike have deniability for how it is used.
    Rachel Shorey, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2022
  • This, of course, was Steyn’s winking way to utter a racist slur about Barack Obama, leaving himself a hair’s breadth of deniability by posing it as a hypothetical.
    Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 19 Feb. 2021
  • But the game was full of moments that created a level of plausible deniability.
    oregonlive, 2 Nov. 2022

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