Sample Sentences for
venal
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  • I know which lords are brave and which are craven, which are loyal and which are venal.†  (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 Amer ican Lit.†  (source)
  • We shared a wall between our sideshow tents, venally baring ourselves to the curious and craven.†  (source)
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  • At their worst, politicians (like the rest of us) can be petty, venal, and self-centered.†  (source)
  • "Don't accuse Mrs. Bread of venality," said Newman.†  (source)
  • 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.
  • I will go to any lengths, indulge in all venalities, to stop this planet from blowing itself up.†  (source)
  • The venal little trolls.†  (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)
  • 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)
  • Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen are haughty and venal.†  (source)
  • If another complained of their venality, we replied, "Disfranchise them or put them in jail."†  (source)
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