venalin a sentence
- The recipient of the payoffs is the High Priestess, who is as venal as they come, and known to be partial to sapphires.† (source)
- In any case, thanks to his invention and German venality many Jews in Warsaw were saved from dying of typhus, if only to die another death later.† (source)
- Not long afterward, in a series of letters to the Boston Gazette that he signed "Novangelus"— the New Englander—Adams argued that Americans had every right to determine their own destiny and charged the Foreign Ministry in London with corruption and venal intent.† (source)
- But pride, venal pride, got the better of you.† (source)
- The venal little trolls.† (source)
- I know which lords are brave and which are craven, which are loyal and which are venal.† (source)
- The great oil companies and railroads sprang from the chicanery and the venality of the robber barons, but they were not now what they were then.† (source)
- At their worst, politicians (like the rest of us) can be petty, venal, and self-centered.† (source)
- We shared a wall between our sideshow tents, venally baring ourselves to the curious and craven.† (source)
- It was not enough that they were pursued by the Nazis: they endured unending fear of betrayal by hoodlum "Jewcatchers"—Jozers prey—and other venal Poles like his lady American Lit.† (source)
- have to work around the self serving, venal politicians so common on the African continent
show 29 more with this conextual meaning
- Organized crime and venal police officers in the country, make it a less predictable business climate.
- From the distance of Monticello, Jefferson saw what Jay had wrought as a "monument of venality" and sent a letter to the new French ambassador at Philadelphia to assure him of his own continuing enthusiasm for France.† (source)
- When the Republican press attacked Callender for his "apostasy, ingratitude, cowardice, lies, venality, and constitutional malignity," Callender struck back in the Recorder on September I, 1802, under the title "The President Again" : It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, a concubine, one of his slaves.† (source)
- They were just as venal as the Jewish police, although in a different way.† (source)
- I will go to any lengths, indulge in all venalities, to stop this planet from blowing itself up.† (source)
- The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal.† (source)
- Small wonder he is venal and corrupt.† (source)
- He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations.† (source)
- If another complained of their venality, we replied, "Disfranchise them or put them in jail."† (source)
- "Don't accuse Mrs. Bread of venality," said Newman.† (source)
- Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair.† (source)
- Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen are haughty and venal.† (source)
- A venal moving-van company had revealed her address.† (source)
- What more is needed by the venal souls which are born in courts, or which are worthy to live there?† (source)
- The soul of the gallant venal city which his elders had told him of had shrunk with time to a faint mortal odour rising from the earth and he knew that in a moment when he entered the sombre college he would be conscious of a corruption other than that of Buck Egan and Burnchapel Whaley.† (source)
- A desolating pity began to fall like dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man of the knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venal than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he would never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man and his companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during all their history, at the bar of God's justice for the souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent.† (source)
- Thus it easily happened that more and more the better class of Negroes followed the advice from abroad and the pressure from home, and took no further interest in politics, leaving to the careless and the venal of their race the exercise of their rights as voters.† (source)
- Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.† (source)
- There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications.† (source)
- In former ages slavery has been advocated by the venal and slavish-minded, whilst the independent and the warm-hearted were struggling without hope to save the liberties of mankind.† (source)
- To the great lady she had given a heart vile and venal; to the SOUBRETTE she had given the heart of a duchess.† (source)
- If there must be sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder, so it must be: but there need be no pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is no longer needed.† (source)
- Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women—countesses or cooks—who were not venal.† (source)
- Any other than yourself would have considered the disclosure of M. de Villefort insignificant, or else dictated by venal ambition," These words were an allusion to the sentiments which the minister of police had uttered with so much confidence an hour before.† (source)
- To the eyes of some it has been represented by the venal suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; to others by the votes of a timid or an interested minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission established the right of command.† (source)
- I shall not remark that the universal and inordinate desire for place is a great social evil; that it destroys the spirit of independence in the citizen, and diffuses a venal and servile humor throughout the frame of society; that it stifles the manlier virtues: nor shall I be at the pains to demonstrate that this kind of traffic only creates an unproductive activity, which agitates the country without adding to its resources: all these things are obvious.† (source)
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She could understand the phoniness of Dr. Pritchett, she thought-it was a racket that gave him an undeserved income; she could even admit the possibility, by now, that Jim might be a phony in his own business; what she could not hold inside her mind was the concept of Jim as a phony in a racket from which he gained nothing, an unpaid phony, an unvenal phony; the phoniness of a cardsharp or a con man seemed innocently wholesome by comparison.†
(source)
standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unvenal means not and reverses the meaning of venal. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- This peculiar felicity of situation has, in a great degree, contributed to preserve the liberty which that country to this day enjoys, in spite of the prevalent venality and corruption.† (source)
- His own good heart pleaded her cause; not as a cold venal advocate, but as one interested in the event, and which must itself deeply share in all the agonies its owner brought on another.† (source)
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