How to Use destroy in a Sentence

destroy

verb
  • The bomb blast destroyed the village.
  • The disease destroys the body's ability to fight off illness.
  • The dog had to be destroyed since its owner could not prevent it from attacking people.
  • All the files were deliberately destroyed.
  • Eventually our problems with money destroyed our marriage.
  • Seoul is destroyed, and maybe the rest of South Korea, too.
    Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 11 Nov. 2023
  • About 10% of the homeless had lived on boats that were destroyed.
    Lane Degregory, Sun Sentinel, 28 Apr. 2023
  • Just don't call it a deal:U.S.-Iran pact: Trump destroyed it.
    Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY, 18 Apr. 2024
  • One of the 10 guns had been destroyed, his lawyer Kate Mangles told the court last month.
    Nancy Dillon, Rolling Stone, 7 Dec. 2023
  • The cathedral has been closed since 2019, when a large fire destroyed parts of it.
    Julia Binswanger, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Sep. 2024
  • Homes and the nearby shops on North Fair Oaks had been destroyed.
    Tribune News Service, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Mar. 2025
  • Schwing: The storm didn’t just destroy boats and motors.
    Emily Schwing, Scientific American, 14 Dec. 2022
  • The premise: Earth is destroyed by aliens, and a few survivors need to start over and get it right this time.
    Matthew Gilbert, BostonGlobe.com, 8 May 2023
  • Lost in a sea of ash: When wildfire destroys a home — and a loved one’s urn — the search begins.
    Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 4 Mar. 2025
  • The first item of their agenda was to defend their country and to destroy Hamas.
    Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2023
  • The two never spoke again, and Albin destroyed all the letters Reed had sent her over the years.
    Will Hermes, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2023
  • Poseidon is not a first strike weapon that will destroy U.S. cities out of the blue.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 17 Jan. 2023
  • And even if they’re destroyed, people would rather be in their homes than be refugees.
    IEEE Spectrum, 29 May 2024
  • The dynamic duo of Hill and Waddle played well but didn’t destroy the Browns.
    Ashley Bastock, cleveland, 13 Nov. 2022
  • It can be used not just to destroy meaning but to find it, create it, share it.
    Hasan Altaf, New York Times, 16 May 2023
  • Speaking of trees, the famed mural atop the bar didn’t fit with the new décor, but the owners didn’t want to destroy it.
    Marc Bona, cleveland, 26 July 2022
  • That would destroy me to leave my children at this moment in their lives.
    Rania Aniftos, Billboard, 18 Dec. 2023
  • The freeze damaged and destroyed a number of the early flowers.
    Devon M. Sayers, CNN, 5 June 2023
  • The fourth device was located at the marsh and destroyed by the Stamford bomb squad.
    Justin Muszynski, Hartford Courant, 15 Jan. 2025
  • The Eaton fire happened on Jan. 7 and Allen’s house was destroyed, along with that of his assistant.
    Eric Sondheimer, Los Angeles Times, 8 Feb. 2025
  • Cars all along the street completely destroyed as well.
    ABC News, 8 Oct. 2023
  • The aim, in other words, was to allow the Russians to advance and then destroy their columns in the front and supply lines in the rear.
    Simon Shuster, Time, 26 Sep. 2022
  • Scores of businesses were damaged, and the town’s Little League field and a new skate park were destroyed.
    Lisa Rathke, Anchorage Daily News, 12 July 2023
  • Nearly 300 homes have been damaged or destroyed in Oklahoma due to fire.
    Bruce Shipkowski, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2025
  • Taking on the role of a teenage boy named Chrono, players have to travel through time and assemble a team to stop a horrifying creature named Lavos from destroying the world.
    Hayes Madsen, Rolling Stone, 16 Mar. 2025

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