as in defamation
the making of false statements that damage another's reputation
the nonstop vilifying had the effect of making some people sympathetic to the victim
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in smearing
to make untrue and harmful statements about
claimed that she had been vilified by the press because of her conservative views
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in insulting
Related Words
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for vilifying
Noun
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Rebel Wilson has been accused of defamation by an actress in The Deb, her directorial debut that has become embroiled in a messy legal saga.—
Jake Kanter,
Deadline,
8 Aug. 2025 -
At certain times, such conspiratorial thinking and refusal to accept the evidence will become dangerous—people will spin up fantasies that result in acts of defamation or threats of violence.—
Kaitlyn Tiffany,
The Atlantic,
7 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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The result was viciously insulting, not the sort of thing anyone would want to read about themselves.—
Miles Klee,
Rolling Stone,
18 July 2025
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To not even reach 10 percent is insulting to all involved and indicates how much needs to change, which is exactly what a group of industry power players are attempting to do in Nashville.—
Steve Baltin,
Forbes.com,
23 July 2025
Noun
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Trump appears to be the first sitting President or Presidential nominee in American history to sue for libel or defamation.—
David D. Kirkpatrick,
New Yorker,
11 Aug. 2025
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Now Trump has filed a lawsuit for libel and slander against the Wall Street Journal, its publisher, two of its reporters, and News Corp founder and former friend Rupert Murdoch.—
USA Today,
USA Today,
20 July 2025
Adjective
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No racist stereotypes, no demeaning facial expressions, no bowed heads, and no broken bodies from the old Hollywood.—
David Faris,
MSNBC Newsweek,
23 July 2025
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Or the controversy over the stereotypically demeaning roles Black actors depicted.—
Paula L. Woods,
Los Angeles Times,
6 June 2025
Adjective
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Living the Values: Nothing is more disparaging for employees than having a leader who demonstrates behaviors that do not align with the organizational values, and no one seems to care.—
Tony Gambill,
Forbes.com,
24 June 2025
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The 2023 Economic Report Of The President published in March of 2023 was relatively disparaging of cryptoassets and DLTs.—
Lawrence Wintermeyer,
Forbes,
5 Dec. 2024
Noun
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The law declares the value of the families that LGBTQ people create at a time when the federal government has marked people who are not straight and cisgender as targets for vilification and exclusion.—
Jasmine Laws,
MSNBC Newsweek,
27 June 2025
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China’s vilification of Lai echoes Beijing’s denunciations, roughly two decades ago, of Chen Shui-bian, then president of Taiwan.—
Bonny Lin,
Foreign Affairs,
15 May 2025
Verb
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Poor data quality can provide wrong models and alerts, discrediting predictive monitoring.—
Hrushikesh Deshmukh,
Forbes,
24 Feb. 2025
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Johnson released new guidelines for reporting gifts Wednesday after discrediting the investigation.—
Jake Sheridan,
Chicago Tribune,
14 Feb. 2025
Adjective
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In recent weeks, though, her group has doubled in size, and while in the past there were only two or three posts per day, Mitchell and her new moderators now have to wade through 60-plus comments ranging from helpful to libelous.—
Brenna Ehrlich,
Rolling Stone,
25 Apr. 2025
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In Britain, Musk has called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist who was jailed for 18 months in October for repeating a libelous claim about a Syrian refugee schoolboy attacking girls.—
Kim Hjelmgaard,
USA TODAY,
7 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Vilifying.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/vilifying. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.
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