How to Use insidious in a Sentence

insidious

adjective
Definition of insidiousnext
Synonyms for insidiousnext
  • Most people with this insidious disease have no idea that they are infected.
  • This is a lesson that’s best learned early on in your startup journey because burnout is an insidious beast.
    — Barnaby Lashbrooke, Forbes, 12 Nov. 2021
  • The insidious ways in which race affects everything are prime fodder for Hall's movie.
    — Anika Reed, USA TODAY, 27 Oct. 2021
  • But hindsight gives the film a clear perspective: Monjack, while an insidious force in his wife’s life, was far from the only one to blame for her death.
    — Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 11 Oct. 2021
  • While Homelander might be the most direct threat, extremist ideologies are far more insidious.
    — Sophie Hanson, StyleCaster, 4 July 2024
  • Depression can be an insidious condition that looks and feels different for everybody.
    — Ashley Abramson, SELF, 17 Nov. 2021
  • But his doctor drowns and Tony, delirious and alone, wanders into a far more sinister snare, set by the insidious Mr. Todd.
    — Brenda Cronin, WSJ, 8 Oct. 2021
  • Beyond the games themselves, this is a show about poverty, inequality and desperation—and the insidious ways money can turn us against one another.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes, 5 Oct. 2021
  • To varying degrees, each character has been undone by this crisis; all of them are collateral damage at the mercy of something larger and more insidious just out of view.
    — Tim Grierson, Los Angeles Times, 27 June 2024
  • The sheer cynicism of the opening number that introduces the nine assassins can take your breath away: So much anger in the insidious music, such profound despair in the fevered lyrics!
    — Marilyn Stasio, Variety, 14 Nov. 2021
  • And, for what may well be the first time ever in Earth’s multibillion-year history, some of its inhabitants could soon no longer be powerless against an insidious cosmic threat.
    — Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 18 Nov. 2021
  • This hasn’t stopped right-wing pundits from denouncing a relatively modest testing-mandate proposal as something far more insidious.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 28 Oct. 2021
  • While slashing carbon dioxide emissions is critical, the emissions gap report also emphasized the need to control a more insidious culprit: methane.
    — John Keefe and Rachel Ramirez, CNN, 26 Oct. 2021
  • The first, and perhaps most insidious type of fear is in the sphere of our self.
    — Nell Derick Debevoise, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2021
  • And the virus, as the Wall Street Journal put it, is insidious.
    — Andrew Mark Miller, Washington Examiner, 17 Nov. 2020
  • Even so, there are insidious flashes of wit to the way that M3GAN speaks.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 4 Jan. 2023
  • The most insidious form of oppression is that which comes at the hands of your own.
    — Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 28 Jan. 2022
  • The efforts were large and small, from the insidious to old-fashioned dirty tricks.
    — Washington Post, 17 Feb. 2018
  • More insidious is moisture that opens the door to mildew.
    — Popmech Editors, Popular Mechanics, 21 Nov. 2019
  • The story kind of starts to have this insidious effect on you.
    — Roxanne Fequiere, ELLE, 5 Dec. 2022
  • That was what was so insidious about the process, Albury thought.
    — New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021
  • In the calmest, most insidious way, Dorothy had been kidnapped.
    — Hadley Meares, Los Angeles Magazine, 7 June 2018
  • With the insidious nature of this thing, any of us could fall victim.
    — Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Sep. 2020
  • Now the town is known for something much more insidious.
    — Ann Killion, SFChronicle.com, 3 Aug. 2019
  • This recipe is more insidious because, Nadine points out, the ants walk all over it, then take it back to their nest.
    — Isabel Garcia, House Beautiful, 7 Feb. 2020
  • The first is the ongoing insidious change to an ever-warmer world.
    — Jim Williams, Star Tribune, 16 Feb. 2021
  • But this time, as one of the most racist and insidious laws ever created in this country was passed, the leagues slept.
    — Mike Freeman, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2021
  • The twice-monthly mahjong game also fell victim to the insidious virus.
    — oregonlive, 9 June 2021
  • But as many lives as this insidious virus has taken, and will take in the months to come, heart disease will inevitably take more.
    — Fortune, 17 Nov. 2020
  • But there's a more subtle and insidious form of racist stereotyping that can be hard to pin down.
    — Kristen Rogers, CNN, 5 June 2020

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