ill-treat

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for ill-treat
Verb
  • In the procedural drama, Rodríguez brings to life a multi-layered and solemn character shaped by a traumatic childhood — abused within the foster care system, with no knowledge of his origins, and struggling with severe dyslexia.
    Veronica Villafañe, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025
  • Federal employees widely abused the Biden administration‘s telework policies, according to an inspector general report released by the Office of Personnel Management on Friday.
    Haisten Willis, The Washington Examiner, 20 June 2025
Verb
  • People who get mistreated have usually done something to bring it on themselves.
    Abhimanyu Ghoshal, New Atlas, 20 June 2025
  • As the noise pierced through the house day and night, keeping her children awake, Natalie was concerned about dogs possibly being mistreated nearby.
    Alice Gibbs, MSNBC Newsweek, 11 June 2025
Verb
  • One to One concert the duo organized as a response to Geraldo Rivera’s truly shocking exposé of the Willowbrook institution, where children with disabilities were horrifically maltreated and abused.
    Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 29 Apr. 2025
  • Even the first stage of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine - on the pretext of protecting Russian speakers being maltreated - parallels Hitler’s sending shock troops into Czechoslovakia to purportedly safeguard German speakers along the Czech borderlands.
    Kevin Holden Platt, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
Verb
  • In the extreme, influencers are building social-media empires by bullying women into cutting calories and exercising for hours a day.
    Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic, 25 June 2025
  • One more user reminded viewers to learn from the online bullying fellow islander Huda Mustafa, a 24-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, faced earlier in the season.
    Jason Pham, StyleCaster, 24 June 2025
Verb
  • Nicolás Maduro and his enforcers are running a criminal narco-terrorist dictatorship that jails political opponents, tortures dissidents, and crushes any hope of free expression.
    Rachel Wolf, FOXNews.com, 27 June 2025
  • An immigration judge determined that he would likely be persecuted or tortured if deported to Guatemala again, and granted him an order protecting him from removal.
    Solcyré Burga, Time, 25 June 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Ill-treat.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ill-treat. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on ill-treat

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!