as in exploited
to take unfair advantage of
unscrupulous people trying to milk the welfare system for all it's worth
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Recent Examples of milked
Monster has, itself, been the target of criticism from people like the Menendezes and the families of Dahmer’s victims, who feel their traumas have been milked for sensation rather than sublimated into high art.
—
Judy Berman, Time, 6 Oct. 2025
That’s when cows need to be milked next; if no one’s there, a cow could start to leak milk, to develop an infection.
—Emma Hinchliffe, Fortune, 3 Oct. 2025
Host Jimmy Kimmel milked the moment, delaying confirming that their answer was correct for a very tense minute.
—Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 26 Sep. 2025
Games don’t feel milked, overanalyzed, or — as can often be the case with Generation Kickstarter — overtly romanticized.
—Matt Gardner, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
For a while, the Klussendorfs milked their cows on a neighboring farm that had been empty for years.
—Rick Barrett, jsonline.com, 11 Aug. 2025
But strangely, when the researchers milked the well cows with contaminated equipment—the way the virus was assumed to be spreading on farms—the healthy cows did not fall ill.
—Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 5 Aug. 2025
Judy Berman, Time, 6 Oct. 2025
That’s when cows need to be milked next; if no one’s there, a cow could start to leak milk, to develop an infection.
—Emma Hinchliffe, Fortune, 3 Oct. 2025
Host Jimmy Kimmel milked the moment, delaying confirming that their answer was correct for a very tense minute.
—Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 26 Sep. 2025
Games don’t feel milked, overanalyzed, or — as can often be the case with Generation Kickstarter — overtly romanticized.
—Matt Gardner, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
For a while, the Klussendorfs milked their cows on a neighboring farm that had been empty for years.
—Rick Barrett, jsonline.com, 11 Aug. 2025
But strangely, when the researchers milked the well cows with contaminated equipment—the way the virus was assumed to be spreading on farms—the healthy cows did not fall ill.
—Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 5 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for milked
Verb
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Barcelona used a mix of zonal and man-marking but struggled when teams exploited their comparalative lack of height and physicality by using players in motion.—
Anantaajith Raghuraman,
New York Times,
25 Oct. 2025
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Inter-agent trust — the tendency for an AI agent to trust other AI agents by default — can also be exploited to get around the guardrails built into popular systems.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
24 Oct. 2025
Verb
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The mice will be used in experiments on reproduction in low Earth orbit.—
Reuters,
CNN Money,
1 Nov. 2025
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Rare earths are something that China used some years ago in a spat with Japan.—
Kerry Brown,
Time,
31 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Images of Iraqi detainees being stripped naked and abused, published by the media, shocked the world.—
Ben Wedeman,
CNN Money,
5 Nov. 2025
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Many of us were abused by them.—
Phaedra Trethan,
USA Today,
3 Nov. 2025
Verb
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Activists there leveraged this wholly unanticipated outcome to accelerate the rise of an organized antislavery campaign after 1783.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
7 Nov. 2025
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The high court’s nine justices are slated to hear 80 minutes of oral arguments about whether the Commander in Chief lawfully leveraged a 1977 trade law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), in implementing double-digit duties on America’s trading partners across the globe.—
Kate Nishimura,
Sourcing Journal,
5 Nov. 2025
Verb
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Even among some voters who were sincerely uncomfortable with Mamdani’s past rhetoric, many rationalized that an authentic Democrat with a pulse was still better than someone who might be manipulated from afar.—
Philip Elliott,
Time,
5 Nov. 2025
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Experts said those markets are at risk of being manipulated by foreign influence.—
Kate Plummer,
MSNBC Newsweek,
4 Nov. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Milked.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/milked. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
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