Did you know?
At one point in Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien depicts an ancient statue overlooking a crossroads: “Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted … in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead.” The statue had been vandalized by orcs, but the roots of vandalize have more in common with the name of a Tolkien hero. Vandalize comes from the noun vandal, which was originally capitalized and referred to a member of a Germanic people who lived south of the Baltic Sea and sacked Rome in the year 455 CE. This sacking is what likely led to the use of the lower-case vandal for someone who damages or destroys property. The Late Latin word for such a Vandal was Vandalī, a word probably borrowed from a Germanic verb meaning “wend, turn” that also gave rise to the Old English Ēarendel, the name of a mythological figure that inspired Tolkien’s creation of Eärendil, a mariner who wends his way across the sky of Middle Earth carrying the morning star.
Examples of vandalize in a Sentence
Noah Lyons, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Jan. 2025
In the first four months of fighting alone, around 100 universities and research centers were damaged or vandalized, according to Sudan’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.
—Kate Okorie, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Jan. 2025
The driver said that he was assaulted by multiple cyclists and that his vehicle was vandalized.
—Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times, 6 Jan. 2025
Protests by members of the Alawite community, the minority sect the Assad family belongs to, erupted last week in Homs after video showing an Alawite shrine in Aleppo being vandalized circulated online.
—Chantal Da Silva, NBC News, 31 Dec. 2024
See all Example Sentences for vandalize 
Dictionary Entries Near vandalize
Cite this Entry
“Vandalize.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vandalize. Accessed 26 Jan. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
vandalize
verb
Legal Definition
vandalize
transitive verb
Share