(a.) Tending to subvert; having a tendency to overthrow and ruin.
Example Sentences:
(1) After heading for Rome with his long-term partner, Howard Auster, he returned to fiction with a bestselling novel, Julian, based on the life of a late Roman emperor; a political novel, Washington DC, based on his own family; and Myra Breckinridge, a subversive satire that examined contradictions of gender and sexuality with enough comic brio to become a worldwide bestseller.
(2) In the three cases examined, the panel said that none "represents subversion of the peer review process nor unreasonable attempts to influence the editorial policy of journals".
(3) Beijing is furious at the Nobel committee's decision to give the award to Liu, who is serving an 11-year sentence for incitement to subversion for co-authoring Charter 08, an appeal for democratic reforms.
(4) Zhou Shifeng, the founder of Beijing’s Fengrui law firm and one of the lawyers at the centre of the crackdown, is accused of “state subversion”.
(5) Yet the whole thing was sly and subversive, for it whispered, see, see what you have been missing.
(6) It is likely that this process involves subversion of the normal regulatory mechanisms which control expression of proto-oncogenes through the interposition of exogenous, cis-acting enhancer sequences.
(7) They were subversive, and they hung out together and watched films.” It meant a lot to her, because until then she had never heard staff talk about the Connor his parents knew and loved.
(8) According to state media, he began serving a three-year sentence for subversion last month.
(9) His political activism earned him a 10-year jail term for "subversive speech", after which he fled to neighbouring Mozambique to lead guerrilla forces in a protracted war against Ian Smith's government that left 27,000 dead.
(10) Where there were pictures of powerful women, the images tended to be subversive: the same photograph of a grimacing Theresa May was used to illustrate three different stories about the home secretary, and two of the three pictures of the German chancellor showed Angela Merkel puffing out her cheeks, looking mildly absurd.
(11) One man – Guo Xianliang, an engineer from Yunnan Province – is detained on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power after distributing flyers about Liu and the prize in Guangdong, southern China, the organisation reported.
(12) People who are now mainstream politicians were, at their start of their political careers, deemed to be subversive by the Special Branch - to name one: Jack Straw.
(13) The "political subversion" consisted of support for those resisting the murderous assaults of the US and its client regimes, and sometimes – horror of horrors – perhaps even providing arms to the victims.
(14) O'Brien has since become notorious among equal rights campaigners for his vigorous attacks on gay marriage and gay adoptions , calling homosexuality a "grotesque subversion" and "harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved".
(15) Kenton's alliance with Zaleshoff isn't always an easy one - the journalist is unimpressed by the spy's attempt to fob him off with the official Stalinist line on Trotskyite subversion, for example, and Zaleshoff is, not unreasonably, suspicious of Kenton's motives for helping him - but it's kept afloat by the undercurrent of sexual attraction between Kenton and Zaleshoff's sister.
(16) Warp's next act of subversion was to wind up Pete Tong by declaring that bleep was dead and that the future of music was "clonk" - the title of Sweet Exorcist's next 12in.
(17) "I love the making of a book, I love the clash between commerce and art and the subversive quality of thinking, right, if you talk about this book in a certain way you can get it in people's hands."
(18) Microorganisms implement their strategy of persistence by two principal tactics: (1) sabotage of the host's bronchial defenses (ie, direct microbe-mediated damage to the host), and (2) subversion of the host's normally protective defenses into damaging host tissue itself (ie, indirect host-mediated damage provoked by the microbe).
(19) The "final definition" of the program recognized that "final success will require decisive US military intervention," after terrorism and subversion had laid the basis.
(20) So the battles of the last century that were considered subversive at the time, have largely been won.
Undermine
Definition:
(v. t.) To excavate the earth beneath, or the part of, especially for the purpose of causing to fall or be overthrown; to form a mine under; to sap; as, to undermine a wall.
(v. t.) Fig.: To remove the foundation or support of by clandestine means; to ruin in an underhand way; as, to undermine reputation; to undermine the constitution of the state.
Example Sentences:
(1) Their efforts will include blocking the NSA from undermining encryption and barring other law enforcement agencies from collecting US data in bulk.
(2) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
(3) Chadwick felt that Customs and Trading Standards needed to continue their war on illegal tobacco – if not, efforts to tackle smoking could be undermined.
(4) But for decades now there has been a systematic undermining of it [the NHS’s] core values.
(5) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
(6) Like the doctor who makes a decision to operate without consulting the patient, I’m diminishing your autonomy by undermining it.
(7) There, the US Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organisation that accredits healthcare organisations and programmes has issued a standard on “behaviours that undermine a culture of safety” to tackle “intimidating and disruptive behaviour at work”.
(8) Group B meningococcal vaccine consisting of the natural complex of specific polysaccharide and outer membrane protein (OMP) has been shown to be moderately reactogenic, safe with respect to the effect of undermining tolerance to human brain tissue antigens and to produce no allergization of humans.
(9) The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.
(10) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
(11) Entitled Jobs, Justice and Equity, the report warned that growing inequality, marginalisation and disenfranchisement are threatening Africa's prospects and undermining the foundations of its recent success.
(12) Umunna said: "Where you have pay awards that bear no relation to performance, but also can be beyond what a company can sustain, it really undermines trust in the whole system.
(13) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
(14) The home secretary has been concerned that British involvement in the UN refugee programme would become an open-ended commitment that risked undermining the Tories' commitment to reduce net migration to the UK to tens of thousands by 2015.
(15) The Public Accounts committee (PAC) said on Thursday that the "chaos" surrounding the failure of G4S to provide enough staff for the Olympics had undermined confidence in Games organisers.
(16) Moreover, uncertainty about the resolution of these fiscal issues could itself undermine business and household confidence," said Bernanke.
(17) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
(18) James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, who supported Johnson’s aborted leadership bid before backing May, said joking about him risked undermining the foreign secretary.
(19) These effects of governmental restrictions on abortion do indeed interfere with the obstetrician's basic goal of providing optimal care for the patient and undermine their efforts to improve maternal and infant health.
(20) Poor crossing undermined Liverpool in the first leg, Klopp had claimed, but the flaw was remedied quickly in the return.