How to Use libelous in a Sentence

libelous

adjective
  • Mr. Trump’s lawyers called the article libelous and seemed to threaten to sue.
    Adam Liptak, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2017
  • And, in light of Evan’s libelous assault, David defends the honor of the venerable hatch chili pepper.
    Dallas News, 17 Aug. 2021
  • These two have paired off in another match that involved libelous statements: Trump’s birtherism claims.
    John Culhane, Slate Magazine, 8 Mar. 2017
  • In the print media world, if a newspaper runs a libelous story about someone, that person can sue the outlet.
    Animals, 18 Dec. 2020
  • The data privacy law covers a wide swath of real and truthful data that could be held on any device, not just things that could be libelous.
    Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2022
  • Despite what spin the college places on the facts of this case, libelous statements have never enjoyed protections under the First Amendment.
    Emily Bamforth, cleveland.com, 28 June 2019
  • The teen said in his petition that the video was meant to be a parody of action movies, and contained no obscene, libelous or slanderous conduct.
    Angela Ruggiero, The Mercury News, 22 May 2017
  • Or, to put things a bit more sharply, the case will help demarcate the line between really bad journalism and libelous journalism.
    Washington Post, 20 Jan. 2022
  • McMullin said the ad was inaccurate and libelous and has taken legal action over it.
    Sam Metz, ajc, 31 Oct. 2022
  • The accusation of assault alone was libelous under Ohio law.
    David French, National Review, 10 June 2019
  • If a newspaper publishes a libelous story, it can be sued.
    Glenn Harlan Reynolds, WSJ, 18 Aug. 2018
  • So in essence, if there's hate speech on Facebook or facts that are misleading or even libelous or what have you, Section 230 protects these platforms from being sued.
    Claire Thornton, USA TODAY, 1 Nov. 2021
  • The lawsuit was over Lyon-Ballay's blog posts that Fox said were false, libelous and demeaning to her reputation.
    Cynthia Howell, Arkansas Online, 10 Jan. 2023
  • In the post, publisher Jon Newton linked to the allegedly libelous articles.
    Jennifer Welsh, Discover Magazine, 7 Dec. 2010
  • The principle that the truth cannot be libelous became a bedrock of American free-speech law, and was incorporated into the laws of many states after the U.S. was founded.
    The Week Staff, The Week, 26 Mar. 2023
  • The jury agreed with the plaintiff’s accusation that five quotations in my article were false and libelous.
    Janet Malcolm, The New York Review of Books, 8 Sep. 2020
  • This shields them from being sued or prosecuted, such as for defamation, if the libelous statement is made in the chamber, Westminster Hall or a committee of the House of Commons.
    Garret Martin, The Conversation, 2 Feb. 2022
  • Republicans many of whom, including Dent, would thank you for not affixing to them that libelous label.
    George Will, National Review, 6 Jan. 2018
  • She was sued in state court in August by James Marsh, who said her description of the incident on Facebook was libelous and damaging to his reputation.
    BostonGlobe.com, 2 Nov. 2021
  • This time, the jury concluded that two of the contested quotations were false but decided that neither was libelous.
    BostonGlobe.com, 17 June 2021
  • The company has denied that the article was libelous, Reuters reported.
    New York Times, 8 July 2022
  • The copy editor will look for grammatical errors, and sometimes the publisher’s lawyer will check the book to make sure there’s nothing libelous in there, but fact-checking is not part of the standard publisher’s process.
    Constance Grady, Vox, 20 Apr. 2018
  • The publication of a false accusation of a crime like murder is libelous under American law.
    David French, National Review, 12 Aug. 2019
  • The ruling appears to be the first to address the question of whether being labeled as transgender is sufficiently harmful to one's reputation to be libelous.
    NBC News, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Oligarchs can donate their way to legal impunity because Britain’s libel laws place the burden of proof on defendants, who must prove that an allegedly libelous statement is true.
    David Segal, New York Times, 29 Mar. 2022
  • For example, if someone posts something libelous about someone else on Facebook, Section 230 means that Facebook can’t be sued for that the way someone can sue a news organization.
    Catherine Thorbecke, ABC News, 25 Mar. 2021
  • The second is that the websites cannot be held legally responsible for most of what their users post online, shielding the companies from lawsuits over libelous speech, extremist content, and real-world harm linked to their platforms.
    David McCabe, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Other tweets fall into the categories of infantile and allegedly libelous.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 8 Nov. 2021
  • Your Content is not false or libelous and does not infringe the privacy, data protection or confidentiality rights of any third party.
    Harper's BAZAAR, 13 Jan. 2015
  • His lawyers argue that his tweet was not libelous because the activist was voicing an opinion, not an assertion capable of being proved factual or otherwise.
    Washington Post, 20 Feb. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'libelous.' 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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