How to Use afoul of in a Sentence

afoul of

preposition
Definition of afoul ofnext
  • Now the 24-year-old singer seems to have run afoul of a rival drug gang.
    — Wire Services, Dallas News, 14 Sep. 2023
  • Those who run afoul of the rules may get barred from posting.
    — Melina Delkic, New York Times, 19 Nov. 2022
  • The plaintiffs say Penn has run afoul of the Civil Rights Act.
    — Tobi Raji, Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2023
  • That’s where Caviglia ran afoul of the rules, which surprised her.
    — Andrea Marks, Rolling Stone, 16 Sep. 2022
  • He was released in 2003 for that crime but again ran afoul of the law soon after.
    — CBS News, 31 July 2023
  • Clubs that do run afoul of the law won’t get citations right away.
    — Susannah Bryan, Sun Sentinel, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Among the passengers: a trans woman who runs afoul of some toughs.
    — Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The onlookers just watched the raptor try to pick off a duckling and run afoul of the mother duck.
    — Natalie Krebs, Outdoor Life, 28 Feb. 2024
  • Another person who ran afoul of the Swifties is Joe Jonas.
    — Lisa Respers France, CNN, 9 Feb. 2024
  • Luna has said one key question is when Tran bought the weapons and whether that would have run afoul of the state’s evolving gun laws at the time.
    — Scott Wilson, Mark Berman and Reis Thebault, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Jan. 2023
  • Amid this gloom, there were sparks of cheering news; not all artistic endeavors fell afoul of the strikes.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Running afoul of the agreement is punishable with a fine.
    — Killian Baarlaer, The Enquirer, 14 July 2024
  • In that decision, the court ruled that a governor’s veto did not run afoul of the Elections Clause.
    — Adam Liptak, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2022
  • But those who seek to run afoul of Medicare/Medicaid do so at their own peril.
    — Jeff Gorke, Forbes, 16 July 2023
  • And the council says policies like those enacted last year in eight states run afoul of those standards.
    — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Legal experts and tech groups have largely argued that such laws run afoul of the First Amendment.
    — Cat Zakrzewski, Washington Post, 13 May 2022
  • Rosen insisted that doing so would run afoul of the law and the Constitution.
    — Philip Bump, Washington Post, 2 July 2024
  • This has the twin dangers of poisoning prospective jurors, or running afoul of the Court's desire not to try the case in the media.
    — Sasha Pezenik, ABC News, 16 Jan. 2024
  • The council says policies such as those enacted last year in eight states run afoul of those standards.
    — USA TODAY, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The lawsuit also asks the court to declare that the city cannot legally withhold the records without running afoul of the state's public records laws.
    — Miguel Torres, The Arizona Republic, 1 Mar. 2023
  • Eighteen months ago, the club found itself more than $1 billion in the red and running afoul of Spanish soccer’s break-even rules.
    — Joshua Robinson, WSJ, 26 Oct. 2022
  • Facebook page recently ran afoul of the First Amendment.
    — Jack Greiner, The Enquirer, 18 Jan. 2022
  • Some in the West have found ways to limit encampments and even clear them out without running afoul of the 9th Circuit rulings.
    — Jennifer Ludden, NPR, 22 Apr. 2024
  • He was born in Donelson, a Nashville suburb, and spent his youth running afoul of the law, racking up half a dozen arrests for small-time crimes.
    — Sam Kestenbaum, Harper's Magazine, 21 June 2024
  • Amazon said the wheel weights ran afoul of its rules for automotive products and have since been removed.
    — Faiz Siddiqui, Washington Post, 7 July 2023
  • Or your proposal to extend your back wall and add a bedroom could run afoul of land-use rules limiting the ratio of floor area to lot size.
    — Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Niehoff adds that some employers restrict speech outside of the workplace as well, and can do so without running afoul of the First Amendment.
    — Colin Lodewick, Fortune, 20 May 2022
  • In some ways, the ruling wasn’t a shock because the state had agreed in court proceedings that the map ran afoul of the state’s anti-diminishment provision.
    — Geoffrey Skelley, ABC News, 3 Oct. 2023
  • Any attempt to regulate gambling ads in the United States might run afoul of America’s free-speech tradition.
    — Editorial Board, Washington Post, 31 July 2024
  • And the landlords who have ratcheted up rents by double-digit percentages have not run afoul of Montgomery County’s law because of the long delay in approving regulations to enforce the new rules.
    — Katie Shepherd, Washington Post, 24 June 2024

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