How to Use collateral damage in a Sentence

collateral damage

noun
Definition of collateral damagenext
Synonyms for collateral damagenext
  • And like in any war, there will be considerable collateral damage.
    — Samuel Gregg, National Review, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Then there’s the vaquita, an even more endangered species of small harbor porpoise, caught as collateral damage in nets set out for totoaba.
    — Washington Post, 5 Apr. 2022
  • Losses mount because people are too busy elsewhere — fighting for their lives or fleeing with them — to pay attention to such collateral damage.
    — John Wilkens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 Apr. 2022
  • How many humans are caught up as collateral damage in the military-industrial complex's march toward its goals?
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 14 Mar. 2022
  • To convict, prosecutors will need to show that the attacks are not merely accidents or collateral damage.
    — Michael Biesecker, Erika Kinetz, Beatrice Dupuy, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Mar. 2022
  • His gamble already claimed a prominent victim late last year, when Hertz became collateral damage.
    — Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 30 Jan. 2024
  • Drug overdoses have risen to record levels; skipped cancer screenings and childhood vaccinations will add to the virus’s collateral damage in the years to come.
    — Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 3 Apr. 2022
  • Due to how integral open-source code is to every computer system, the fallout from a protestware attack can also be unpredictable and cause massive collateral damage.
    — Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, 22 Mar. 2022
  • By the end of most of them, blood is on the floor, and the collateral damage is steep.
    — Mark Harris Keita Morimoto, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2024
  • Winning four games in four days is a big ask, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be collateral damage along the way.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Jan. 2023
  • Seems there is a lot of collateral damage around this kind of lifestyle.
    — Matt Thompson, Spin, 31 Aug. 2023
  • If the missile can’t find the target, it can be assigned a crash point so as not to risk collateral damage.
    — Sébastien Roblin, Popular Mechanics, 12 May 2023
  • But in the meantime, there could be some collateral damage.
    — Alex Tapscott, Fortune, 28 June 2022
  • And with the local tech world such an easy target for snark and scorn, no wonder the lush rooftop suffers collateral damage.
    — John King, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Sep. 2022
  • All these headwinds caused collateral damage to the wealth of this year’s listees.
    — Justin Doebele, Forbes, 12 Aug. 2022
  • This has all been a huge turn-on for them, the collateral damage not even worth considering.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 24 May 2022
  • But the risks to Ukrainian culture are more than mere collateral damage.
    — New York Times, 15 July 2022
  • The truth of the matter is, 2,000 pound bombs that are not precision guided inevitably lead to a lot of collateral damage.
    — CBS News, 19 May 2024
  • Through no choice of their own, kids are too often the collateral damage when those adults become lost in ther own chaotic lives.
    — Sharon Grigsby, Dallas News, 17 Mar. 2023
  • With a thriller’s pace, the play muses on guilt, intractable conflict and collateral damage.
    — Celia Wren, Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Still, being able to move forward without collateral damage should be worth the effort in the end.
    — Tarot.com, Baltimore Sun, 6 May 2024
  • The reasons for the slowdown are straightforward, collateral damage of all the progress made on other Covid fronts.
    — Ed Silverman, STAT, 21 Sep. 2022
  • But the collateral damage from the sanctions has been wider than expected.
    — Daniel Flatley, Bloomberg.com, 14 June 2022
  • In order to grow, the company has to reinvent itself, and there will be a lot of collateral damage when that happens.
    — John Brandon, Forbes, 11 Nov. 2022
  • And finally, be aware of the collateral damage around these deadly events.
    — Janelle Davis, CNN, 3 Feb. 2023
  • The effects will spread far and wide, but the ripples will hit China’s neighbors first—and perhaps hint at how bad the collateral damage farther afield could be.
    — Jacky Wong, WSJ, 6 May 2022
  • The collateral damage to Pivetta’s success was a spent bullpen.
    — Julian McWilliams, BostonGlobe.com, 31 Aug. 2023
  • Discuss with each of them ways to minimize the collateral damage.
    — Washington Post, 25 Apr. 2022
  • Still, the movie positions them as collateral damage in Winehouse’s path of destruction.
    — Kyndall Cunningham, Vox, 16 May 2024
  • This case reminded him how much collateral damage regrets and bitterness can do.
    — Mandi Bierly, TVLine, 16 June 2024

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