How to Use collateral damage in a Sentence

collateral damage

noun
  • The brewers are collateral damage in a trade war that doesn’t have much to do with them.
    Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Children are the collateral damage in the plan to get Sam back to Osea.
    Shannon Carlin, refinery29.com, 28 Sep. 2020
  • Farmers and factories were part of the collateral damage from the volley of tariffs as the two largest countries in the world jockeyed for an edge.
    Josh Boak, Star Tribune, 26 Aug. 2020
  • Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future.
    Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 15 Sep. 2020
  • Killing mammals was either just collateral damage or a form of protection against possible predators.
    The Economist, 26 Sep. 2020
  • By his estimate, the county would have lost a catastrophic 2,000 jobs as collateral damage if the mill closed.
    Josh Boak, chicagotribune.com, 16 Sep. 2020
  • The Jordanian Air Force did not express any regret about the collateral damage.
    Ed Caesar, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2024
  • Another concern is that the United Nations system could become collateral damage in the fight over the Iran snapback.
    David Wainer, Bloomberg.com, 18 Sep. 2020
  • By the end of most of them, blood is on the floor, and the collateral damage is steep.
    Mark Harris Keita Morimoto, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2024
  • Fear of collateral damage is putting the idea on hold for now.
    Ian Talley, WSJ, 25 Feb. 2022
  • And as in the wild, wild West, there is likely to be collateral damage.
    Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Aug. 2021
  • Winning four games in four days is a big ask, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be collateral damage along the way.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Jan. 2023
  • Seems there is a lot of collateral damage around this kind of lifestyle.
    Matt Thompson, Spin, 31 Aug. 2023
  • Along the way, people have been a kind of collateral damage.
    Brenda Goodman, CNN, 11 June 2024
  • If the missile can’t find the target, it can be assigned a crash point so as not to risk collateral damage.
    Sébastien Roblin, Popular Mechanics, 12 May 2023
  • But in the meantime, there could be some collateral damage.
    Alex Tapscott, Fortune, 28 June 2022
  • Zoos have often been collateral damage in war around the world.
    Washington Post, 5 Mar. 2022
  • Also, the lack of care, seeming care, for collateral damage, if things go wrong, has been a big contention for them.
    Katie Campione, Deadline, 4 Nov. 2024
  • And with the local tech world such an easy target for snark and scorn, no wonder the lush rooftop suffers collateral damage.
    John King, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Sep. 2022
  • All these headwinds caused collateral damage to the wealth of this year’s listees.
    Justin Doebele, Forbes, 12 Aug. 2022
  • This has all been a huge turn-on for them, the collateral damage not even worth considering.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 24 May 2022
  • That would allow for less collateral damage to the body and more of a focused treatment for cancer.
    Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 20 Nov. 2021
  • But the risks to Ukrainian culture are more than mere collateral damage.
    New York Times, 15 July 2022
  • And keep in mind, when the tables turn, collateral damage is inevitable.
    Mellody Hobson and John W. Rogers Jr., WSJ, 11 Dec. 2020
  • The truth of the matter is, 2,000 pound bombs that are not precision guided inevitably lead to a lot of collateral damage.
    CBS News, 19 May 2024
  • Through no choice of their own, kids are too often the collateral damage when those adults become lost in ther own chaotic lives.
    Sharon Grigsby, Dallas News, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Hong Kong is in the midst of a perfect storm of a pandemic, social unrest and collateral damage from a trade war.
    Justin Doebele, Forbes, 3 Mar. 2021
  • With a thriller’s pace, the play muses on guilt, intractable conflict and collateral damage.
    Celia Wren, Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Still, being able to move forward without collateral damage should be worth the effort in the end.
    Tarot.com, Baltimore Sun, 6 May 2024
  • The collateral damage has hit the wallets of aficionados of French wine, Irish and Scottish whisky and Italian hard cheeses.
    Adrian Croft, Fortune, 4 Mar. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'collateral damage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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