abrogate

in a sentence

Where an old Englishman ghost, sickled to a tree, was abrogated by a pair of two-egg twins—a Mobile Republic with a Puff who had planted a Marxist flag in the earth beside him.†  (source) Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1997

Political opposition, thereby, is given an inhumane overlay which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized intercourse.†  (source) Arthur Miller, The Crucible, 1953

The man had abrogated a simple agreement.†  (source) Dave Eggers, Zeitoun, 2009

She reestablished Sunday masses, suspended the use of red armbands, and abrogated the harebrained decrees.†  (source) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967

Lamar hoped to make the North realize that the abrogation of the Constitutional guarantees of the people of the South must inevitably affect the liberties of the people of the North.†  (source) John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, 1955

The Nazis, as Rubenstein points out, were the first slaveholders to fully abrogate any lingering humane sentiments regarding the essence of life itself; they were the first who "were able to turn human beings into instruments wholly responsive to their will even when told to lie down in their own graves and be shot."†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

And also exactly what would be complained of in all the literature which is great enough and old enough to have attained canonical rank, officially or unofficially, were it not that books are admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses their greatness in consideration of abrogating their meaning; so that the reverend rector can agree with the prophet Micah as to his inspired style without being committed to any complicity in Micah's furiously Radical opinions.†  (source) George Bernard Shaw, Man And Superman, 1903

Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both: —touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement.†  (source) William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, 1936

In a matter of days, Congress abrogated the French-American treaties of 1778, created a permanent Marine Corps, passed the Sedition Act, and approved the nomination of Washington as supreme commander.†  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its ships of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the convulsed Continent.†  (source) Herman Melville, Billy Budd, 1924

For years it had been argued that Southern Democrats would seek to abrogate the obligations that the United States Government had incurred during the Civil War and for which the South felt no responsibility.†  (source) John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, 1955

Although the Americans are constantly modifying or abrogating some of their laws, they by no means display revolutionary passions.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 2, 1840

Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rushes fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I will not!†  (source) William Faulkner, Light in August, 1932