How to Use disreputable in a Sentence

disreputable

adjective
  • But in Wilde’s day, the church was still the Scarlet Woman, home for the disreputable and deplorable.
    William McGurn, WSJ, 8 Oct. 2018
  • Such a move is seen as disreputable by many, in part because of the threat of escalation.
    Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2024
  • Yet some players in this industry go out of their way to come off as disreputable.
    Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2021
  • And neither the Saudis, nor anyone else, would have dared do something so brazen and disreputable again.
    Mark Danner, The New York Review of Books, 3 June 2020
  • In the disreputable pantheon of Netflix teensploitation, this one’s close to the bottom.
    Charles Bramesco, Vulture, 18 Feb. 2022
  • Some of the conservatives around MacArthur were rather disreputable, to put it mildly.
    Ian Buruma, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023
  • In the '60s, comics was a fledgling industry, even disreputable.
    Barbara Vandenburgh, USA TODAY, 18 Feb. 2021
  • Both rank among the most disreputable figures of the Trump era in American politics.
    Fred Kaplan, Slate Magazine, 15 Sep. 2017
  • And who could blame Twins fans for lingering resentment over the carnage the disreputable Astros inflicted on the Twins at the end of May 2017?
    Star Tribune, 11 June 2021
  • As Marshall notes, this is standard racist rhetoric with a deep and disreputable history.
    Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, 19 June 2018
  • Once upon a time, a punk was a person, and generally a disreputable one.
    Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 6 Sep. 2021
  • The business of democracy once again seemed toxic, sludgy, and disreputable.
    Joel Mathis, The Week, 24 Mar. 2022
  • In a secular genre scene such as Two Boys Playing Dice, the slightly disreputable amusement is laden with great moral weight, as each throw of the dice risks the fate of the lad’s immortal soul.
    Benjamin Lima, Dallas News, 6 Oct. 2022
  • There were some people who didn't like my being deeply involved with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan and disreputable rock 'n' rollers.
    Clark Collis, EW.com, 8 Sep. 2020
  • What a waste that in practice, the film would turn out to be the plainest version of itself, all but bereft of the knowing humor and grabby perversion that makes this disreputable genre great.
    Charles Bramesco, Vulture, 19 May 2021
  • He slowly got rid of his disreputable entourage, or they, feeling less valued, left him.
    Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 1 June 2020
  • Just a few decades ago, horror films were mostly considered disreputable and schlocky.
    Tasha Robinson, The Verge, 1 Nov. 2018
  • The idea of controlling weather is now regarded as a bit disreputable.
    National Geographic, 13 Aug. 2017
  • Their provenance erased, the precious metals and gems could be sold to diamond dealers, pawn shops or disreputable jewelers, one of the men said.
    Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2022
  • To many, the impeachment power seemed tarnished and disreputable.
    Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, WSJ, 4 May 2018
  • What’s more, the only non-Civil War use of Section 3 was entirely disreputable.
    Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 24 July 2022
  • The problem there seemed to be that the AI search tool was sourcing its answers from disreputable clinics that were offering unproven treatments.
    IEEE Spectrum, 13 June 2024
  • Their rowdy energy is so willfully disreputable, they must be made by a bunch of know-nothing lunkheads.
    Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 29 Dec. 2023
  • It’s not unreasonable for Stripe to want to protect customers from scam artists or disreputable sellers.
    Meg Jones Wall, Wired, 29 Oct. 2021
  • Robbie Kendall was waiting on the steps of the tomb in madras shorts and a light blue polo shirt, his blond hair worn just long enough to suggest surfer without actually looking disreputable.
    Nick Romano, EW.com, 12 Dec. 2022
  • Bottom-line is that there are ways to make these disreputable undertakings harder and more costly to perform.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2023
  • Turning Wikipedia pages into a book is bizarre and disreputable, but possibly legal.
    Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 18 June 2012
  • Her parents know the neighborhood as a den of the disreputable rich, where bright new mansions are interspersed with the concert saloons that the Reverend Parkhurst is so bent on expunging.
    The Editors, Curbed, 26 Apr. 2021
  • Some floaters work for outlets that are too new to have been included in the most recent seating chart; others work for outlets that are marginal or disreputable.
    Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2017
  • Perhaps the best strategy for closing down disreputable zoos and tiger farms, suggested Mr. Wiek and Mr. Redford, would be to sterilize the inbred and mixed-breed tigers.
    Richard C. Paddock, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2019

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