How to Use ruinous in a Sentence

ruinous

adjective
Definition of ruinousnext
Synonyms for ruinousnext
  • But in the wake of Oct. 7 and the ruinous Israel-Hamas war, the need for a lasting solution is on the front burner.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 9 Feb. 2024
  • That truth, as told by these three men, was a portrait of ruinous neglect.
    — Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, 11 June 2021
  • Still, the consensus was that the gamble would be ruinous.
    — Lila MacLellan, Fortune, 27 July 2023
  • For now, though, AmEx seems to be finding growth without a ruinous price tag.
    — Telis Demos, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2021
  • And yet, that ruinous, self-negating love was made to seem inescapable and glamorous.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2023
  • Still, in practice the threat from the tools is important but likely not ruinous.
    — Lily Hay Newman, Wired, 8 Dec. 2020
  • It’s been almost a year since a ruinous civil war flared in Sudan.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 1 Apr. 2024
  • This could be ruinous to families, as costs get out of control.
    — Jack Kelly, Forbes, 6 July 2022
  • But the adjacent naval campaign has proved ruinous for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 3 May 2022
  • Yet some ruinous outburst of his despair is not the worst that might have befallen.
    — Bradley J. Birzer, National Review, 26 Sep. 2021
  • But a clash is brewing over what many take as a potentially ruinous threat to that quest.
    — Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel, 21 July 2022
  • If a major business pivot is made at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons, the consequences can be ruinous.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes, 18 Jan. 2022
  • The effect of the pandemic on the economy has been almost as ruinous.
    — New York Times, 8 Apr. 2021
  • By the early Eighties, though, his drug abuse was having a ruinous impact.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 19 Jan. 2023
  • At least the Queen of France had a foundation of noblesse-oblige training on which to build her ruinous glories of high style and fashion.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2023
  • These are just a handful of the stories playing out across the country and the world, as this virus continues its ruinous rampage.
    — Heidi Stevens, chicagotribune.com, 5 Oct. 2020
  • On the face of it, that figure seems to imply that paying a fine even as large as nearly half a billion dollars shouldn’t be ruinous to him.
    — John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 19 Mar. 2024
  • Lopez pleaded guilty to robbing a male jogger that same night to avoid a more ruinous rape conviction.
    — al, 25 July 2022
  • Iraq declared victory over IS in late 2017 after a ruinous and bloody war.
    — Star Tribune, 26 July 2021
  • Growing ranks of producers, and the small consumer base, led to ruinous drops in price while costs kept increasing.
    — Alexander Sammon, Harper's Magazine, 16 Oct. 2023
  • For now, the country appears to have avoided a ruinous breakdown of its electoral system.
    — Alexander Burns, New York Times, 24 Nov. 2020
  • Haiti was no stranger to ruinous storms and smaller quakes, but this was its worst natural disaster.
    — Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2021
  • Even if the press ultimately prevailed, the expense of the proceedings could be ruinous, Haslam said.
    — Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2022
  • On the other hand, striving for perfection at one’s vocation can cause lots of stress, which is ruinous for health.
    — Matt Fuchs, Fortune Well, 14 May 2023
  • His father, Michael Kable of Shelby Township, said after the hearing that his son's death was ruinous to the family.
    — Bill Laytner, Detroit Free Press, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Going the whistleblower route can be arduous and ruinous in many ways.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 23 June 2021
  • President Bashar Assad chose to respond with brute force, setting in motion a chain of events that led to a bloody and ruinous decade of civil war.
    — Nicholas Blanford, The Christian Science Monitor, 6 May 2022
  • Iran fought a ruinous eight-year war with Iraq in the nineteen-eighties that further depleted its armory.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 27 Dec. 2021
  • The Internet is ablaze with people hate-watching episodes and bemoaning the ruinous treatment of Paris, the tacky clothing.
    — Raven Smith, Vogue, 7 Oct. 2020
  • The coronavirus was good for some industries and ruinous for others.
    — Will Yakowicz, Forbes, 3 Mar. 2021

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