(v. t.) To do harm to; to injure; to damage; to waste; to destroy.
Example Sentences:
(1) Bill Gates betrayed his ailing business partner and tried to deprive him of his share of the Microsoft fortune, according to a scathing memoir from Paul Allen , the company's billionaire co-founder.
(2) Abramovich, as you might expect, is now scathing about Berezovsky.
(3) Those sorts of failures and might-have-beens have pockmarked Kerry’s record, and the rebukes he has faced have at times been scathing.
(4) Myners – a non-executive director of Co-op group – was also scathing in his assessment of the board members after asking them a simple retail question and likening their inability to answer to that of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-op bank, who had stumbled over basic questions posed by the Treasury select committee last year.
(5) ( more from Dean Baker here ) Other critics of austerity were equally scathing (Paul Krugman posted once , then twice ) .
(6) Her attacks on the president are scathing and she sees him as a busted flush, placing herself at the heart of drives to rebuild the French right after Sarkozy "implodes" at the election.
(7) Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was scathing about the EU package for Greece over three years agreed last weekend by 15 eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund: "Markets have judged those arrangements to be inadequate," he said .
(8) An NHS trust's lack of honesty caused "unnecessary pain and further distress" to a family who had already suffered from the tragic and avoidable death of a baby boy, the health service ombudsman has said in the latest scathing verdict on the defensive culture within the health service.
(9) What the president thinks is it’s quite clear that new leadership with a set of skills and experiences that are unique to the challenges that OPM faces are urgently needed.” Republicans were scathing in their response to the scandal.
(10) Wong says he has been shocked by its silence at critical moments and is scathing overall: “It just focuses on trade deals.” And that, perhaps, is the subtext of the new documentary’s title.
(11) In a scathing assessment, the CQC reported it had found: “a culture of bullying and harassment” that “morale was low” and that “the decision in 2013 to remove 220 posts across the trust and down band several hundred more nursing staff has had a significant impact on morale and has stretched staffing levels in many areas” that “staffing was a key challenge across all services” poor implementation of a new IT system “had impacted on patient safety and care” and “patients were struggling to get appointments and be recognised as needing care and treatment” in A&E “there were delays in patients being assessed and in handovers taking place for patients who arrived by ambulance” and some patients were seen by the CQC to have received what it called “sub-optimal care”.
(12) Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee, was scathing about the size of the payoff.
(13) He also attempted to calm the waters after scathing reports about the Downing Street dinner with May that he and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker , attended last week.
(14) Today staff who worked on the ill-fated magazine were scathing about Lebedev, who became the first Russian (and ex-KGB spy) to own a UK title when he bought a controlling stake in the Evening Standard in January.
(15) While focusing criticism on a few members of the regiment – particularly Corporal Donald Payne, Lieutenant Craig Rodgers and Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Mendonca – the report also passes scathing comment on the role of the unit's regimental medical officer, Dr Derek Keilloh, and its padre, Father Peter Madden.
(16) Mark Rock, the founder and chief executive of sound-sharing application Audioboo , was scathing about the industry's moves towards digital switchover and the decision to base principally around DAB radio.
(17) It is particularly scathing about the practice of some officials personally targeting political opponents including successive home secretaries, the Tory former chief whip Andrew Mitchell , and Tom Winsor, who produced the official report proposing significant police reforms.
(18) Russia’s nuclear sabre-rattling is unjustified, destabilising and dangerous Jens Stoltenberg In blunt language, the Nato chief delivered a scathing critique of Russia’s behaviour over the past year – including Moscow’s armed intervention in Ukraine – and vowed the transatlantic alliance would redouble its commitment to “collective defence”.
(19) As a consequence, he's the go-to guy for a scathing quote on dissembling theologies and their gullible believers.
(20) A scathing report by the Department of Justice last week concluded that Ferguson’s police and court system was blighted by racial bias .
Swath
Definition:
(v. t.) A line of grass or grain cut and thrown together by the scythe in mowing or cradling.
(v. t.) The whole sweep of a scythe, or the whole breadth from which grass or grain is cut by a scythe or a machine, in mowing or cradling; as, to cut a wide swath.
(v. t.) A band or fillet; a swathe.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is a place that occupies two thirds of our planet but very little is known of vast swaths of it.
(2) It may not point to independence – nor, given that large swaths of Wales remain firmly dominated by Labour, mean any huge advance for Plaid Cymru.
(3) Ridley and Boyega are part of a swathe of actors – also including Girls' Adam Driver and Ingmar Bergman regular Max von Sydow – who were confirmed by studio Disney in May.
(4) Israel's control of a huge swath of the West Bank is costing the Palestinian economy $3.4bn (£2.1bn) a year, or 35% of its GDP, according to a report from the World Bank .
(5) San Francisco Tenderloin map They could potentially gentrify this gritty, 50-block swath of downtown into condos, lofts, hipster bars, organic cafes and yoga studios, as has happened in other parts of San Francisco and the Bay area.
(6) Mali: a guide to the conflict Read more In response, the Tuareg separatists attacked military and police points as far as Tenenkou in the south, to prove it still controlled vast swaths of the desert territory.
(7) Photograph: Reuters Isis controls large swaths of north-east Syria including its stronghold of Raqqa and a number of lucrative gas and oil fields in the east.
(8) Mexican armed forces will take over security in a large swath of a western state where shootouts between vigilante groups and drug traffickers erupted over the weekend, a top official has announced.
(9) Inside the Islamic State ‘capital’: no end in sight to its grim rule Read more The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia and an alliance of rebels known as the “Euphrates Volcano” – backed US-led coalition air strikes – have seized swaths of territory from Isis, including the strategic border town of Tal Abyad .
(10) In a summit in Paris last week, the west African nations of Cameroon, Chad and Niger agreed to each contribute a battalion to form a border patrol troop based around the arid Sahelian belt, large swaths of which have fallen under the control of Islamist terrorists in recent years.
(11) Parts of England and Wales have been hit by flooding in recent weeks after unusually wet weather followed two dry winters in a row that had left swaths of England in drought.
(12) Swaths of our working population are now welfare dependent.
(13) Who can deny that the west has served as a recruiting sergeant for Islamic extremism, that it effectively helped hand large swathes of Iraq and Libya over to such elements?
(14) The arts broadcaster Lord Bragg said Hall, who moves to the BBC from running the Royal Opera House, had no option but to cut a swath through BBC middle management in the wake of the damning conclusions of the Pollard report into the Savile crisis.
(15) Isis militants control large swathes of territory in both countries.
(16) But the security barriers Israel has built since 2000 have divided what was a fairly contiguous swath of territory into what El-Ad called “bubbles”: areas separated by gates, walled highways leading to Israeli settlements, and checkpoints.
(17) Tea swathed in frothed milk sweetened to within an inch of its long, UHT life.
(18) 1 Forge the Malaqi Trail: Wadi Mujib, Jordan From its northern reaches in Syria, the Great Rift Valley cuts a swathe through Jordan, pushing up the mountains that define many of the country's beautiful and well-managed nature reserves.
(19) The media – and large swaths of the public – like absolutes such as this (no fat!
(20) A Greenpeace spokesperson : "Asia Pulp and Paper has been responsible for the destruction of vast swaths of Indonesia's rainforests, including areas of habitat for the critically endangered Sumatran tiger.