How to Use collateral damage in a Sentence

collateral damage

noun
Definition of collateral damagenext
Synonyms for collateral damagenext
  • And keep in mind, when the tables turn, collateral damage is inevitable.
    — Mellody Hobson and John W. Rogers Jr., WSJ, 11 Dec. 2020
  • The central bank says that cash remittances are just 1% of total remittances and don’t justify the collateral damage the bill might cause.
    — Matthew Bristow, Bloomberg.com, 13 Dec. 2020
  • Storytelling was only one of many elements that suffered collateral damage.
    — Steve Denning, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2021
  • None of the actors were physically inside the cars during the actual crash, yet the tension arose from how quickly the sun was setting and collateral damage to cars parked nearby.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times, 19 Dec. 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • The reasons for the slowdown are straightforward, collateral damage of all the progress made on other Covid fronts.
    — Ed Silverman, STAT, 21 Sep. 2022
  • But the collateral damage from the sanctions has been wider than expected.
    — Daniel Flatley, Bloomberg.com, 14 June 2022
  • In order to grow, the company has to reinvent itself, and there will be a lot of collateral damage when that happens.
    — John Brandon, Forbes, 11 Nov. 2022
  • And finally, be aware of the collateral damage around these deadly events.
    — Janelle Davis, CNN, 3 Feb. 2023
  • The flip side of this thinking can also, of course, be found in Israel, where any loss of an innocent Jewish life is mourned but the deaths of thousands of Palestinian women and children can be dismissed as collateral damage.
    — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 7 Oct. 2024
  • Terry has a particular set of skills, and one of those skills is minimizing collateral damage.
    — Daniel Joyaux, IndieWire, 4 Sep. 2024

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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