(a.) Acting for reward; serving for pay; paid; hired; hireling; venal; as, mercenary soldiers.
(a.) Hence: Moved by considerations of pay or profit; greedy of gain; sordid; selfish.
(n.) One who is hired; a hireling; especially, a soldier hired into foreign service.
Example Sentences:
(1) Donald Trump’s campaign chairman took a “mercenary” approach to lobbying the US government on behalf of international clients accused of killings, rapes and other atrocities, according to one of his former colleagues.
(2) Other South African reports have suggested the mercenaries were paid $15,000 each.
(3) Deplores the continuing flows of mercenaries into the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and calls upon all Member States to comply strictly with their obligations under paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011) to prevent the provision of armed mercenary personnel to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya; Ban on flights 17.
(4) Two of his top aides, Conor Cruise O'Brien and George Ivan Smith, both became convinced that the secretary general had been shot down by mercenaries working for European industrialists in Katanga.
(5) The CAR's ousted president, Francois Bozize, a Christian, fled the capital in March as the Seleka, including mercenaries from Chad and Sudan, overran the city.
(6) And he kept his mercenaries and tortured people inside these walls," said Tarek Saleh, a 25-year-old revolutionary.
(7) Unclothed female bodies offer a route up the ladder, just as armed male bodies do for the mercenary "sellswords", who seek their fortune by fighting.
(8) Allies can now expect to pay for their security umbrella, as the US military effectively turns into a mercenary force.
(9) There have been further protests in Iran in support of the mainly Shia Bahraini opposition, and Tehran recently warned Pakistan against sending any more "mercenaries" to join the crackdown.
(10) Yet some have dismissed the vote as irrelevant to Gaddafi and his remaining commanders, or argued that the resolution itself prevents any investigation into non-Libyan "mercenaries" who some allege have been involved in the killings.
(11) They say 10 generals who led the rebellion came from Chad, although they describe them as mercenaries rather than Chadian army officers.
(12) Ocampo suggested Saif could be travelling with the protection of mercenaries who are preparing to fly him to an unidentified African state that does not co-operate with the ICC and would be unlikely to extradite him.
(13) Bahrainis often complain that the riot police and special forces do not speak the local dialect, or in the case of Baluchis from Pakistan, do not speak Arabic at all and are reviled as mercenaries.
(14) In a statement on Friday, Russia's defence ministry said the Ukrainian military operation was launching rocket strikes on protesters, accusing it of employing ultra-nationalists from the group Right Sector and “English-speaking foreigners” it suggested were American mercenaries.
(15) Oh, and football clubs – two of them contesting the Champions League final in London next week – built on youth policy, supporter ownership and long-term strategy, not mercenary millionaires, foreign oligarchs and instant gratification.
(16) Later the kidnappers were described as "Chechen mercenaries" fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra, an extreme Islamist group that has links with al-Qaida.
(17) Fox, speaking on the steps of the Pentagon after meeting Gates, said: "We have seen significant progress made in the last 72 hours with Gaddafi's forces losing their grip on Misrata and we have received reports of under-age soldiers and foreign mercenaries being captured – this underlines the regimes inability to rely on its own security forces.
(18) The secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld , focused on finding a political solution for the first few months, but by September, he and his aides were convinced that western interests and mercenaries in Katanga were preventing a settlement, and authorised a UN military offensive there, codenamed Operation Morthor.
(19) It is thought the people in the portraits were the direct descendents of the original settlers in the Fayum, who were Greek mercenary soldiers who fought for the Ptolomies.
(20) Janjaweed forces that committed genocide in Darfur were frequently linked to Gaddafi: many had once been Islamic Legion members, the rag-tag mercenary army he had created to fulfil his vision of a pan-Arabic band across north Africa.
Venal
Definition:
(a.) Of or pertaining to veins; venous; as, venal blood.
(a.) Capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration; made matter of trade or barter; held for sale; salable; mercenary; purchasable; hireling; as, venal services.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is not about who is tied to the most money – "there are so many people you could think should be taken" – but about who is judged to be too busy establishing their own kingdoms and using the party's authority purely for their own venal ends.
(2) The political charge sheet is long: incompetence, weakness, venality.
(3) All the while, a long list of corrupt and venal despots turned their rule into virtual kleptocracies and stole their children's futures.
(4) Given the venality of the system, Putin even said he could empathise with the protesters in Maidan square .
(5) That “trollumnist” Mark Latham, that “misogynist”, “venal”, “crazy-eyed moron” whose views should be “rejected and dismantled and kicked into the gutter where they belong” has resigned from the Australian Financial Review.
(6) Moral leader The Daily Mail on the FA's refusal to comment on JT: "Even in the sleazy, venal world of football, Terry's record was unforgivable.
(7) Plasma cadmium and zinc were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry in inferior venal caval or peripheral venous blood in thrity hypertensive patients and fifteen normal subjects.
(8) The difference between the "rotten apple" (venal or incompetent physician) and the "bad apple" (careless or aggressive physician) is cited.
(9) Pigs to peerages: Lord Ashcroft’s act of revenge shows British politics at its venal worst | Simon Jenkins Read more Working for Gordon Brown , a man of Victorian sensibilities and a volatile temper, the second call was invariably greeted with the single word “What?
(10) Changes in the choroidal vasculature include: Venal focal dilations and narrowings, increased tortuosity, hypercellularity, increased formation of vascular loops and microaneurysms in choriocapillaries and formation of sinus-like structures between choroidal lobules.
(11) The restoration of integrity in banking will not happen without changes in the law to introduce serious criminal sanctions against venal traders and grossly negligent bosses.
(12) Thus the therapeutic usefulness for the treatment of chronic venal insufficiency is proven.
(13) Nice for those in the art world who view this approach as testimony to my venality, shallowness, malevolence.
(14) Did the Kelly affair crystallise everything that was wrong and venal about the whole Iraq adventure for Yorke?
(15) Corporations-are-people got the righteous ink, but the venal sin at the heart of Citizens United lies in the appalling equivocation that declares money to be speech.
(16) Yet some analysts say that the drive has simply pushed lavish official banquets and venal gift-giving underground .
(17) Dan Snyder’s former general manager, Vinny Cerrato, seems to suspect as much , and every crass venal thing everyone knows about Dan Snyder suggests Cerrato isn’t wrong.
(18) The authors, American researchers attached to special forces, conclude that the weakness and venality of the government in Kabul is an increasing source of strength for the insurgents.
(19) The country is virtually bankrupt ; Yanukovych stole billions from his own treasury, merely the latest in a long line of venal Ukrainian politicians who have looted the state.
(20) For local leaders, blaming al-Qaida both deflects blame from their own inefficiency and venality as well as potentially unlocking considerable financial, diplomatic and security assistance from the west.