How to Use prey in a Sentence

prey

1 of 2 noun
Definition of preynext
Synonyms for preynext
  • The seals are easy prey for sharks.
  • The lion stalked its prey.
  • The bird circled above looking for prey.
  • Too often elderly people are easy prey for swindlers and other criminals.
  • The former prey required twice the force for crabs to crack open with their claws than the latter.
    — WIRED, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Groups of whales swim in a circle around their prey … and blow bubbles.
    — Laura Helmuth, Scientific American, 1 Apr. 2023
  • Stand up straight to not look like prey, the park service stated, and keep eye contact with the cougar.
    — Hanh Truong, Sacramento Bee, 23 Mar. 2024
  • The best way to avoid falling prey to such a scam is to avoid giving money over the phone or through an email.
    — Daniel Neman, Anchorage Daily News, 17 July 2023
  • The web’s stiff frame absorbs the impact of the prey before it is trapped by the sticky lines so that the spider can tackle its food.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 18 Apr. 2023
  • When whales evolved, Churchill points out, the oceans were not as productive and full of fishy prey as in more recent times.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Mar. 2024
  • Who needs a movie that is almost all predators, with barely a word from their prey?
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 15 Sep. 2023
  • Deer, bears and rabbits lived among the pines and aspens, and eagles soared above, hunting for prey.
    — Deon J. Hampton, NBC News, 26 Mar. 2023
  • The Spinosaurus was semiaquatic, hunting prey in rivers.
    — Vivian La, Chicago Tribune, 4 June 2023
  • Bald eagles soar overhead and ospreys dive to prey on fish.
    — Bennet Goldstein, Journal Sentinel, 21 Mar. 2023
  • With 40-50 enormous, sharp teeth and a double-hinged jaw, Mosasaurus could open its mouth wide enough to swallow its prey whole.
    — Allison Futterman, Discover Magazine, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Adults overwinter in leaf litter and emerge in spring to devour prey.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 July 2023
  • The boas will stalk or wait to strike their prey with their jaws, constricting their bodies around the prey and squeezing to ensure death.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 30 Nov. 2023
  • The female spiders will hunt down prey and then share it with their spiderlings.
    — Jason Bittel, National Geographic, 22 Jan. 2024
  • As the Tyrannosaurus rex once hunted its prey, so controversy now stalks the trade in its bones.
    — Lucy Alexander, Robb Report, 16 July 2023
  • Sperm whales send out clicks and creaks, which bounce off of prey, allowing the whales to detect their dinner at a distance.
    — Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 17 Oct. 2023
  • The fish tempt prey with bioluminescent bacteria that live in the tip of the lure.
    — Elizabeth Anne Brown, New York Times, 22 Nov. 2023
  • In that year, declining numbers of their fish prey led to only about a quarter of the birds fledging chicks.
    — Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Sep. 2023
  • Like bats, the dolphins use echolocation to forage for prey in the cloudy waters of the Orinoco and Amazon River basins.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 4 Aug. 2023
  • One is the array of senses that a shark uses against its potential prey.
    — Ian Rose, Discover Magazine, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Anything not nailed down in America, along with quite a bit that is, becomes prey.
    — David Streitfeld, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2023
  • As waters off the northeast coast warm up, both whales and their prey are migrating to new regions.
    — Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 1 Feb. 2024
  • Buffalo are larger and risky prey for lions to take on.
    — Popular Science, 25 Jan. 2024
  • It’s suspected the motives include warmer water to the south and better prey.
    — Mark Price, Miami Herald, 25 Jan. 2024
  • But Sunday was not a great game for Jackson, who fell prey to a strip sack in the first half and was intercepted in the end zone in the fourth quarter.
    — Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2024
  • Their prey varies from large animals like moose to animals as small as mice.
    — Saman Shafiq, USA TODAY, 24 Aug. 2023
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prey

2 of 2 verb
  • They’ve been known to scale or dig beneath fences to prey on pets.
    — Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times, 11 Mar. 2024
  • This is due to that area's seal population, which the sharks prey on.
    — Ronn Blitzer, Fox News, 30 June 2022
  • Hawks and owls prey on rodents bounding across grassy slopes.
    — Louis Sahagún, Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2024
  • On its website, the FBI reminds teens that scammers prey on their fear.
    — Faith Karimi, CNN, 13 May 2023
  • Chaplin was not a libertine in the sense of a man who sleeps around or who preys on women.
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2023
  • And cats tend to prey on weak birds that probably would have died anyway.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 5 July 2022
  • The large salamander mainly preys on crayfish, so the team made sure there were plenty in the area.
    — The Indianapolis Star, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The rat snakes are common in Texas and usually prey on chicken eggs.
    — Brenton Blanchet, Peoplemag, 14 Apr. 2023
  • The pileup of issues is a concern likely to prey on the minds of Twitter’s investors.
    — Wired, 12 July 2022
  • Not so long ago, most ranchers kept a pack of dogs to deal with the mountain lions that preyed on their livestock.
    — Bill Heavey, Field & Stream, 1 Feb. 2024
  • Of the species humans prey on, almost 40 percent are threatened.
    — Emily Harwitz, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 July 2023
  • That’s because there are so many animals that prey on smolts.
    — oregonlive, 27 Aug. 2023
  • High transaction fees add to worries that they can be used to prey on poor people.
    — Amrith Ramkumar, WSJ, 25 Aug. 2022
  • It’s what moves her to prey on the circling vultures trying to take her family’s land.
    — Daron James, Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2022
  • The true enemy is weight-loss schemes, which are designed to prey on women and, by proxy, their daughters.
    — Danielle Sinay, Glamour, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Once the parasite decides to prey on your dog, the substance activates in its body.
    — Laxmi Corp, The Salt Lake Tribune, 12 July 2022
  • The deer caught on camera likely had been swimming for its life, as gators have been known to prey on them and smaller mammals.
    — Simone Jasper The Charlotte Observer (tns), al, 4 May 2023
  • These arthropods are more likely to prey on ticks when they are fully engorged with blood.
    — Paul Richards, Field & Stream, 9 Nov. 2023
  • There is no reason this person should ever be set free again to prey on others.
    — Greg Wehner, Fox News, 12 Mar. 2024
  • But overall the new research found that only about half of the species humans prey on end up being eaten.
    — Lesley Evans Ogden, Scientific American, 29 June 2023
  • Birds prey on dragonflies, but Burne said he’s also seen fish jump out of the water and take dragonflies from the air.
    — Don Lyman, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Serial killers were preying on teenagers in their summer camps, in their dreams.
    — Louis Bayard, Washington Post, 19 Aug. 2023
  • Each of those initial five episodes is preying on a different kind of fear people might have.
    — Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Oct. 2023
  • Now he and his allies in this effort on the Hill speak of the platforms themselves as preying on children’s well-being.
    — Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic, 2 Aug. 2023
  • That's when fisheries managers began to stock non-native predator fish in Lake Michigan to prey on the alewives.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 8 June 2022
  • When not preying on Dolores, Humbert Humbert is a poet and a wit.
    — S. C. Cornell, The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2023
  • In Knight’s retelling, Pip learns that few fortunes are made without preying on the misfortune of others.
    — Inkoo Kang, The New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2023
  • Davis said serial killers tend to prey on people on the margins of society.
    — Aria Jones, Dallas News, 21 July 2023
  • But wolves prey on fawns at shockingly higher rates in these areas compared to elsewhere, the study shows.
    — Katie Hill, Outdoor Life, 1 Nov. 2023
  • Even with their impressive length, Fraser says that the larger ichthyosaurs of the era — massive marine reptiles that once ruled the seas — may have preyed on Dinocephalosaurus.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 20 Mar. 2024

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