How to Use sham in a Sentence

sham

1 of 2 noun
Definition of shamnext
Synonyms for shamnext
  • Many people believed he could help them, but I knew he was a sham.
  • It’s a sham, a short con or a long one, and the deck is stacked against you.
    — John Archibald | Jarchibald@al.com, al, 3 June 2022
  • And of course, the whole impeachment process is just a sham.
    — Fox News Staff, Fox News, 28 Apr. 2021
  • Still, critics and activists have called the election a sham.
    — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Covid isn’t fatal, the tests are a sham, and says Kuzma was just a sickly man.
    — Sam Kestenbaum, Rolling Stone, 17 Sep. 2022
  • Still, Facebook’s critics were ready to call out the Oversight Board as a sham.
    — Steven Levy, WIRED, 8 Nov. 2022
  • This sham of a lockout can be explained by one word: greed.
    — Los Angeles Times, 8 Mar. 2022
  • But it’s a sham, and creates dire consequences for people caught in a web of fines and fees.
    — John Archibald | Jarchibald@al.com, al, 19 Sep. 2022
  • Because beating around the bush can give your business the appearance of a sham or a scheme.
    — John Hall, Forbes, 21 Mar. 2021
  • Plan your ribbon placement (our top ribbon starts 1-inch down from the top corners of the sham).
    — Sonja Carmon, Better Homes & Gardens, 14 Apr. 2021
  • The rumors refused to die, no matter how many times they have been exposed as a sham.
    — Michael Smolenscolumnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Apr. 2022
  • It’s offered in two sizes and a selection of ten colors, and the set includes two shams as well.
    — Jamie Weissman, Better Homes & Gardens, 13 July 2023
  • Among them is Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has spent much of the past decade behind bars on charges rights groups say are a sham.
    — Siobhán O'Grady, Washington Post, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Navalny and his team said the charges were fabricated to silence him and slammed the trials as a sham.
    — Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2022
  • And so, this last chance for white male identity to find its purpose through war is revealed to be a sham.
    — The Politics Of Everything, The New Republic, 24 May 2023
  • In their lawsuit, the investors claim the banks should have seen the signs that Stanford’s operation was a sham.
    — Laurel Brubaker Calkins, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Feb. 2023
  • Meanwhile, Democrats, who have for months labeled the audit a sham, doubled down.
    — Stacey Barchenger, The Arizona Republic, 25 Sep. 2021
  • But as anyone who’s ever made a drastic life change knows, the idea of a totally new you is a sham.
    — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Apr. 2022
  • Anything less would grant the crypto industry an enormous privilege in the true sense of the word and make a sham of the rule of law.
    — Matt Sekerke, National Review, 1 Oct. 2021
  • When Pons and Fleischmann published a paper at last, their work was savaged as a sham.
    — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 1 Mar. 2023
  • Along with the cover, the set comes with two matching pillow shams of the same material.
    — Isabel Garcia, Peoplemag, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Each set comes with a comforter, two standard pillow shams, two Euro shams, and a bed skirt with a 16-inch drop.
    — Sharon Brandwein, Southern Living, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Aside from the twin and twin XL sizes, the set comes with a duvet cover and two pillow shams—the two smallest sizes only come with one sham.
    — Kylee McGuigan, Popular Mechanics, 27 Apr. 2022
  • The set includes a comforter, flat and fitted sheet, pillowcase and sham.
    — Jamie Kim, Good Housekeeping, 7 Nov. 2022
  • At the news conference Wednesday, Zalkin that the move to divest assets was a sham that had been years in the making.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Feb. 2023
  • But their counteroffer to the President's plan is a sham -- based on three faulty premises.
    — Jeffrey Sachs, CNN, 1 June 2021
  • This was a much bigger idea than the right of a naturopath to sell sham detoxifying candles.
    — Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, The New Republic, 28 Feb. 2023
  • Just add the pillow shams and a duvet cover to pull the whole bedding look together.
    — Lauren Taylor, Better Homes & Gardens, 19 Aug. 2023
  • The proclamation of a Friday-free, four-day workweek is a sham—at least for the majority of us.
    — Lindsay Tjepkema, Forbes, 25 Apr. 2022
  • Critics say that elections amount to little more than a sham, and Putin is all but guaranteed to win come March.
    — Yuliya Talmazan, NBC News, 8 Feb. 2024
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sham

2 of 2 adjective
  • The money would be paid to a sham charity, and then used for bribes.
    — NBC News, 11 Nov. 2021
  • He was put on the court through a sham process, and his place on the court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice.
    — Michelle Ruiz, Vogue, 16 Sep. 2019
  • Court records show that Whitaker ran Loan Starters, a sham business in Texas.
    — Chase Jordan, Charlotte Observer, 22 Feb. 2024
  • Do not go to one of those sham tech training institutes.
    — Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, 13 Mar. 2019
  • The set comes with the duvet cover, as well as two sham pillowcases.
    — Madeline Diamond, Travel + Leisure, 11 Apr. 2020
  • This trial wasn’t like so many others where some enrollees get the drug in question and others get a sham dose.
    — Andrew Joseph, STAT, 3 Apr. 2023
  • In the sham trials of the Jim Crow South, everyone knew the verdict before it was delivered.
    — John Blake, CNN, 5 Feb. 2020
  • Kern also took part in the sham hand-recount of ballots in Maricopa County in 2021.
    — WIRED, 15 Nov. 2023
  • This Sunday, the regime of Nicolas Maduro will hold a sham parliamentary election in Venezuela.
    — Jorge Jraissati, National Review, 2 Dec. 2020
  • Gates believes a sham audit in Arizona was a petri dish for denialism.
    — Jess Bidgood, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Nov. 2022
  • Pathogen exposure and not the sham treatment changed the ants’ behavior in ways that further protected the colony.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 26 Nov. 2018
  • Instead, there is torture, a sham trial, and a gulag (called laogai).
    — Nr Editors, National Review, 20 June 2019
  • The risk of a sham or counterfeit drives piracy and counterfeiting.
    — Wayne Lonstein, Forbes, 2 Nov. 2021
  • In one study, a surgeon gave patients a sham knee surgery, where the surgeon made an incision, but did nothing to the knee before sewing it back up.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 3 June 2022
  • And these are some of the things that can potentially influence how people perceive the sham treatment.
    — Kevin Purdy, Ars Technica, 26 Sep. 2023
  • The sham audit in Arizona continues, although behind closed doors, unlike the open counts and recounts of ballots the first time.
    — Zachary B. Wolf, CNN, 19 May 2021
  • Did QAnon sneak in (or get invited) to Arizona's sham election audit?
    — Richard Ruelas, The Arizona Republic, 20 May 2021
  • After a sham trial, Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were declared guilty.
    — National Geographic, 4 June 2020
  • That non-profit, as well as other shell entities, made sham payments to the defendants.
    — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 20 Aug. 2020
  • His lawyers allege Edison conducted a sham investigation and used the complaints to push him out of his job.
    — Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2022
  • After a sham trial lacking due process and transparency, the Saudi court sentenced him to 20 years in prison plus a 20-year travel ban after his time served.
    — Areej Al-Sadhan, CNN, 1 July 2022
  • But there was no such deception here in that the existence of the sham candidates was well publicized prior to Election Day.
    — Eric Zorn, chicagotribune.com, 19 July 2019
  • The allegations that a group of men ran a sham school and production company all to prey upon young women at the start of their careers are appalling.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2019
  • In Gabon and Niger, youngsters fed up with sham politics crowd streets and stadiums to yell slogans in favor of military coups.
    — Declan Walsh, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2023
  • The resulting sham prosecution made plain to Waring the hypocrisy of the Justice Department’s efforts.
    — Joseph Crespino, WSJ, 18 Jan. 2019
  • Waters said Fleming helped to divert millions of dollars to an account set up by Murdaugh for a sham company.
    — NBC News, 29 Oct. 2021
  • He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show.
    — Susanne Craig, The Seattle Times, 2 Oct. 2018
  • He has been sentenced to death after a legal proceeding that has been widely criticized as a sham trial.
    — Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News, 21 Aug. 2023
  • So, as Putin prepares for a sham election to return him for a fifth term as president, Navalny has been conveniently eliminated.
    — Trudy Rubin, The Mercury News, 22 Feb. 2024
  • Smith alleged that Trump tried to use the Justice Department to open sham election investigations and influence state legislatures with claims of fraud that Trump knew were false.
    — Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2024

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