do violence
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As professors Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner observe, construing the word “whoever” to mean “whoever except the president” would do violence to the English language.
From Slate • Apr. 30, 2024
To quote a passage from this novel is to do violence to its tightly laced phrases of reconsideration.
From Washington Post • Aug. 2, 2022
But a panel of five judges on the Court of Final Appeal unanimously overturned both the conviction and sentence on Friday, saying such a wide interpretation "would do violence to the language".
From Reuters • Jul. 15, 2022
The Maori scholar Te Pakaka Tawhai once wrote that the purpose of religious activity in his culture was “to seek to enter the domain of the superbeing and do violence with impunity.”
From New York Times • May 11, 2022
All I can hope to do is so to reconcile the principles of omission and condensation as least to do violence to the style while preserving as far as possible the completeness of the exposition.
From Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)