How to Use defunct in a Sentence

defunct

adjective
  • She wrote for the now-defunct newspaper.
  • The substance could be used to fill defunct oil and gas wells.
    Jesse Bedayn, ajc, 17 Feb. 2023
  • West Virginia bailed on the now-defunct Big East the following year for the Big 12.
    Tim Bielik, cleveland, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Three of the drainage districts are now defunct and don’t even collect a tax.
    David Taylor, Houston Chronicle, 15 Dec. 2019
  • It wasn’t sold in the United States and became defunct a few years ago.
    James Raia, The Mercury News, 12 May 2024
  • So how did the center coax a defunct chimney to work again?
    Domenica Bongiovanni, Indianapolis Star, 1 May 2020
  • West Virginia bailed on the now-defunct Big East the following year for the Big 12.
    Mark Heim | Mheim@al.com, al, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Some of these chains are defunct, some are struggling, and some are thriving.
    Addison Del Mastro, The Week, 20 July 2021
  • It's made up (at least in part) of folks and perhaps aircraft from the now-defunct Wow airline.
    The Washington Post, 22 June 2020
  • The defunct shopping center was on 59th and Northern avenues, and the city pitched the site as an option for the Coyotes.
    Corina Vanek, The Arizona Republic, 11 Feb. 2023
  • Their nuptials took place in a private suite of the now-defunct Aladdin Hotel.
    Nicole Briese, PEOPLE.com, 23 June 2022
  • Ending the agreement with the soon-to-be defunct nonprofit allows the town to take over the plot and decide what to do next.
    Alison Steinbach, azcentral, 19 Oct. 2019
  • The analysis of statewide election results found 12 small towns have gone defunct in the past 15 years.
    USA TODAY, 4 Nov. 2019
  • At the time, Black was a producer for the now-defunct Q101 radio station.
    Britt Julious, chicagotribune.com, 3 Sep. 2020
  • Later that year, though, 101 coins moved from the address to the now defunct bitcoin exchange BTC-e.
    Andy Greenberg, Wired, 5 Nov. 2020
  • Illinois Central is now defunct and the train line is run by Metra.
    Madeline Buckley, Chicago Tribune, 27 Sep. 2022
  • Once home to a now-defunct farm, the land isn’t coughing up much info, either (though the formal dig may soon change that).
    Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Feb. 2020
  • Paul and his brother Logan rose to fame on the defunct social platform Vine with their comedic shorts.
    Daysia Tolentino, NBC News, 8 June 2023
  • Last year, the Detroit giant managed to sell two examples of the defunct sports car.
    Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 8 Jan. 2024
  • The program, now defunct, was at its height in the early to mid-1990s when Xiong was in elementary school.
    Sarah Volpenhein, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 16 Sep. 2021
  • The two runners are former teammates with the now defunct Nike Oregon Project.
    oregonlive, 28 Oct. 2020
  • Men unload steamer trunks at the train depot from the now-defunct Atlantic Coast Line.
    Lisa Maria Garza, orlandosentinel.com, 27 Nov. 2019
  • Her firm is now defunct, and some of those artworks have begun heading to sale in auctions run by courts and Phillips.
    Alex Greenberger, ARTnews.com, 19 Mar. 2025
  • They will be held in the Westfield North County shopping mall parking lot in front of the defunct Nordstrom store.
    George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Aug. 2020
  • The league's Great Kills chapter in Staten Island is defunct.
    NBC News, 12 Aug. 2021
  • In England, the nuggets of news appear in old copies of long-defunct sports newspapers dating to 1930.
    New York Times, 24 Jan. 2022
  • Tiffany Walden was one of the Ebony writers who never got paid, and she is named in a lawsuit filed against the now-defunct magazine.
    NBC News, 10 Feb. 2020
  • The same thing happened the last time the Russians attacked under a giant flag—in that case, the blood-red flag of the defunct Soviet Union.
    David Axe, Forbes.com, 30 Mar. 2025
  • For the past couple of years, he's served as chief judge of the federal district court, a tenure that's spanned two of the now defunct federal investigations of Donald Trump.
    Carrie Johnson, NPR, 18 Mar. 2025
  • Trump also commuted the sentence of one year of probation imposed on Ozy Media for the defunct news and entertainment company’s conviction in the same case.
    Dan Mangan, CNBC, 28 Mar. 2025

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