(v. t.) To overturn from the foundation; to overthrow; to ruin utterly.
(v. t.) To pervert, as the mind, and turn it from the truth; to corrupt; to confound.
(v. i.) To overthrow anything from the foundation; to be subversive.
Example Sentences:
(1) In such conditions, proposals which subvert fundamental academic principles meet no effective opposition.
(2) His reports alleged active, sustained and covert collusion to subvert the election which, if confirmed, could constitute treason.
(3) This is the first such virally-encoded soluble cytokine receptor to be identified, and may represent a more general mechanism by which viruses subvert the host immune system.
(4) He told the court: “We have been trying at the bar to imagine whether we can think of any other group of legal or natural persons, terrorist suspects, arms dealers, Jews, in respect of whose evidence one might even begin to think that one could tenably say, ‘Well, of course, in looking at this evidence I have been very careful because I know from the past that these people are a bit devious and a bit unworthy, and the only thing they’re really interested in is subverting public health.’ ” Yet last week’s judgment, running to 1,000 paragraphs, confirmed in excoriating detail just how determined big tobacco has been down the decades to achieve precisely this goal.
(5) Liu is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power after co-writing Charter 08, a call for democratic reforms in China.
(6) China is furious at the decision to recognise Liu, jailed for incitement to subvert state power after co-authoring a call for democratic reforms.
(7) Mona Deeley, a producer for Cinema Badila: Alternative Cinema on BBC Arabic TV , said: "The secret cinema is an interesting initiative for both subverting the ban on cinema and as a form of civil and cultural resistance."
(8) These findings, together with the fact that the worm's gut contains hemosiderin, suggest that the worm subverts the vascular reaction and causes within the nodule a controlled hemorrhage that serves the worm's nutritional needs.
(9) No wry observations or whoops-a-daisy trombones to subvert the conceit for period lolz.
(10) It claimed to be the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting of Jewish leaders, in which they discussed their goal of a global plan to subvert the morals of gentiles and control the press and the global economy.
(11) It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself.” In an early meeting with the production team, they were, the statement claims, handed images of “pro-Assad graffiti – apparently natural in a Syrian refugee camp”.
(12) The attack on al-Jazeera is part of an assault on free speech to subvert the impact of old and new media in the Arab world.
(13) Government inspections of garment factories are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and the garment industry, by far Bangladesh's biggest exporter, is highly influential in government.
(14) One year later, a court sentenced him to 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.
(15) "The bottom line is that we're all unique individuals – even when I'm trying to imitate Mariah, it's still through my lens," she explains when we get on to the subject of subverting pop for the masses.
(16) "He repeatedly sacrificed his own interests, even his liberty, in order to defend these values and challenge and subvert the most powerful factions that were their enemies," Greenwald wrote.
(17) And particularly once you start splitting them over jurisdictions and things like that it becomes much more difficult to subvert their intentions.
(18) We speculate that a major mechanism by which some oncogenes promote metastatic ability is by subverting a signal transduction process, resulting in activation of a set of genes, some of which appear to promote metastatic ability.
(19) But Thorne’s working life has been spent subverting genres, through his Bafta-winning work on supernatural thriller The Fades and Shane Meadows’s bleak, beautiful coming-of-age miniseries This Is England ’86 and ’88.
(20) His adrenalin-pumping shows are woven into American life, yet subvert its capitalist fundamentals, that innate American principle of screw-thy-neighbour, in favour of what he insists to be "real" America – working class, militant, street-savvy, tough but romantic, nomadic but with roots – compiled into what feels like a single epic but vernacular rock-opera lasting four decades.
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.