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At one point in Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien depicts an ancient statue overlooking a crossroads: “Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted … in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead.” The statue had been vandalized by orcs, but the roots of vandalize have more in common with the name of a Tolkien hero. Vandalize comes from the noun vandal, which was originally capitalized and referred to a member of a Germanic people who lived south of the Baltic Sea and sacked Rome in the year 455 CE. This sacking is what likely led to the use of the lower-case vandal for someone who damages or destroys property. The Late Latin word for such a Vandal was Vandalī, a word probably borrowed from a Germanic verb meaning “wend, turn” that also gave rise to the Old English Ēarendel, the name of a mythological figure that inspired Tolkien’s creation of Eärendil, a mariner who wends his way across the sky of Middle Earth carrying the morning star.
Examples of vandalize in a Sentence
Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 7 Oct. 2025
Campaigns made with generative AI are mocked online and vandalized in public.
—Jesus Mesa, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 Oct. 2025
During the last 35-day shutdown in 2018 and 2019, the parks association said, people vandalized national parks left unguarded by rangers.
—Howard Cohen, Miami Herald, 3 Oct. 2025
During the last government shutdown, which went on for more than a month between December 2018 and January 2019, national parks were vandalized and trash and human waste overflowed.
—Connor Greene, Time, 2 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for vandalize
Cite this Entry
“Vandalize.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vandalize. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
vandalize
verb
Legal Definition
vandalize
transitive verb
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