How to Use self-destruction in a Sentence

self-destruction

noun
  • Who could fail to be entertained by such a saga of self-destruction?
    Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 5 Oct. 2023
  • In Season 2, the show is richer and pricklier, keyed in to the nuances of self-destruction.
    Margaret Lyons, New York Times, 20 Apr. 2023
  • In that attempt, the Starship failed, as did SpaceX’s self-destruction system.
    William Gavin, Quartz, 14 Mar. 2024
  • To move away from feedback loops of self-destruction and violence.
    David Lipset, Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2024
  • The singer combines the genre’s enduring themes of heartbreak and self-destruction with camp humor and a distinctly Irish sense of the absurd.
    Roisin Kiberd, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2023
  • There should be a sense of wounding loss in the disintegration — the self-destruction, even — of their small, frail family.
    Guy Lodge, Variety, 17 May 2024
  • To turn your back on the sun and worm your way into ever colder and darker places seems like a deliberate act of self-destruction.
    Chris Wheatley, Longreads, 16 Mar. 2023
  • The dysfunction and self-destruction is nothing short of stunning.
    S.e. Cupp, New York Daily News, 8 Feb. 2024
  • One of those benefits, strangely enough, seems to be programmed self-destruction.
    Quanta Magazine, 6 Mar. 2024
  • This anti-art horror film appeals to the hipster appetite for self-destruction.
    Armond White, National Review, 17 Nov. 2023
  • The war between regret and self-destruction plays out most unforgettably in a scene where Drey walks into a motel room for a drug deal and finds Dan inside.
    Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 3 May 2024
  • Sylvia Plath narrates her self-destruction Hughes doesn’t wonder.
    Nora Krug, Washington Post, 6 June 2023
  • There is a perverse tendency, in such situations, to treat the artist’s act of self-destruction as somehow a final artistic flourish.
    Chris Wiley, The New Yorker, 16 Apr. 2024
  • Her daughter is described in stark extremes: a once-cherubic infant who’s now a churlish adolescent bent on self-destruction.
    Naomi Huffman, The Atlantic, 22 Jan. 2024
  • There wasn’t much for Sibley to object to, beyond Giuliani’s general self-destruction.
    Charles Bethea, The New Yorker, 16 Dec. 2023
  • The purpose of this appendage was simple: to accelerate the satellite’s self-destruction by pushing it into the Earth’s atmosphere.
    Jason Thomson, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 Apr. 2023
  • The self always related persons to its own identity: self-regard, self-destruction, self-love.
    Olga Tokarczuk, Harper's Magazine, 6 Jan. 2023
  • Like a lot of his clients, the chef, Cliff Grubin, used to be a hedonist but has since swapped self-destruction for self-care, specializing first in juicing and eventually branching out into raw food.
    Hadley Freeman, Travel + Leisure, 20 June 2023
  • Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.
    Jen Juneau, Peoplemag, 6 May 2024
  • Ballads of death and self-destruction suffused with strength and determination.
    Jeff Weiss, Spin, 21 Aug. 2023
  • Her self-destruction was almost necessary because her old mechanisms for coping no longer served her.
    Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 10 May 2023
  • Humanity failed miserably to defend itself against the plague of self-destruction.
    Elsa Keslassy, Variety, 2 Nov. 2023
  • The address is striking now for its suggestion that Ukrainian independence would be an act of self-destruction, however.
    Jordan Michael Smith, The New Republic, 2 June 2023
  • Vain, often drunk, desperate to get a leg up, the title character weaves in and out of humiliating scenarios, scraping by with a sense of self-inflation to match his appetite for self-destruction.
    Matt Brennan, Los Angeles Times, 8 Apr. 2024
  • Re-platforming Jones will surely be seen in the corporate world as another sign of impulsive, reckless management and an appetite for self-destruction.
    Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 10 Dec. 2023
  • Humans could be wiped out by a catastrophic asteroid strike, commit self-destruction with worldwide nuclear war or succumb to the ravages caused by the climate emergency.
    Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Earth Day is now a global event, recognized by more than a billion people worldwide as a day to support positive environmental action that protects us from what some see as self-destruction.
    Terry Baddoo, USA TODAY, 21 Apr. 2023
  • Pop stars being badasses, as ever, but expressing doubt, and doing it without the flagellating self-destruction that might have come with an early iteration.
    Susannah Felts, Longreads, 27 Apr. 2023
  • The mental darkness attacking DEI leads, ultimately, to self-destruction.
    Wonder Drake, Baltimore Sun, 28 Apr. 2024
  • Tommy documents Franklin's lows as spectacularly as her highs, from family conflicts to career burnout, self-destruction, and battles with addiction.
    Wired Staff, WIRED, 31 Mar. 2023

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