persecuted 1 of 2

as in oppressed
suffering grave abuse or injustice at the hands of one in authority a nation that is still regarded as a refuge for persecuted people from around the world

Synonyms & Similar Words

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persecuted

2 of 2

verb

past tense of persecute
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Example Sentences

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.
Recent Examples of persecuted
Verb
More and more, people who have loyally served Putin’s system are being persecuted, mainly on the grounds of corruption. Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 8 Sep. 2025 Molero and her husband arrived in the United States in 2003, fleeing after they were persecuted for working alongside opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa. Antonio Maria Delgado, Miami Herald, 5 Sep. 2025 Archival clips show thousands of Jews persecuted in Germany have begun migrating to Palestine. Ritesh Mehta, IndieWire, 5 Sep. 2025 His deportation to El Salvador violated a 2019 court order that protected him from being deported to his home country because of concerns that he’d be persecuted by violent gangs. Marlene Lenthang, NBC news, 25 Aug. 2025 Criminals are to be persecuted. Tommy Trenchard, NPR, 23 Aug. 2025 Foucault, a gay man who died of AIDS, was hardly unaware that people are sometimes persecuted and even killed for their sexuality. Michael Robbins, Harpers Magazine, 20 Aug. 2025 Reyes and his family left Nicaragua after being persecuted for their political activism, and sought asylum at the southern border, Hernandez said. Graham Hurley, CNN Money, 9 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for persecuted
Adjective
  • The series was originally based on a novel by Margaret Atwood and followed June's life in a dystopian world called Gilead following a Second American Civil War, where women are oppressed and only used in society for their fertility.
    Liza Esquibias, PEOPLE, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Even the long oppressed Russian people would cheer.
    Peter Lucas, Boston Herald, 21 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • Griffin, who does clinical work in Long Island, New York, said his sister-in-law is in her 40s and quite wary of long COVID, the enduring, debilitating health issues that have afflicted millions of Americans who contracted the coronavirus.
    Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today, 5 Sep. 2025
  • But Thomas was afflicted by health troubles on the 26-56 Nets last year.
    Alex Kirschenbaum, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • Everyone Lee comes into contact with is at minimum annoyed with him most of the time, if not outright hating him.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 4 Sep. 2025
  • Keanu, still annoyed from the veto ceremony, talked to Ava Pearl in the HOH room and called Rachel a liar.
    David Wysong, Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • By surviving more than 3,500 cycles, the material demonstrated an unusually high degree of durability for this class of batteries, which are often plagued by rapid capacity fade.
    Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Yet, the industry is plagued by low wages and high turnover rates.
    Jennifer Jay Palumbo, Forbes.com, 10 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • Think flying in spring water to a Caribbean island because a female client thought the local water irritated her scalp.
    Louis J. Esterhazy, Footwear News, 7 Sep. 2025
  • In fact, the aliens take a back seat to the human interactions, which irritated some viewers eager to see actual aliens in a show about an extraterrestrial invasion.
    Jennifer Ouellette, ArsTechnica, 5 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • The number paid respects to Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was tortured and killed because of his sexuality in 1998.
    Natasha Dye, PEOPLE, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Soliman fled to the United States in 2014 on a visitor visa and later filed a petition for asylum, describing how security forces over the years had locked him up on false charges and tortured him with electrical shocks.
    Hannah Allam, ProPublica, 10 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • No one has bothered to figure out the degree to which that alters the scaling laws of AI models until now.
    Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The two were hardly bothered, though.
    Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 15 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • Through the first-person narration of his protagonist, Nicholas, a teenager suddenly besieged by anxiety, Clune conveys with uncanny vividness what a panic attack feels like.
    Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Landslide in western Sudan kills at least 1,000 A landslide in western Sudan killed at least 1,000 people, intensifying hardship in a country besieged by years of civil war.
    Tasneem Nashrulla, semafor.com, 4 Sep. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Persecuted.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/persecuted. Accessed 17 Sep. 2025.

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