How to Use smuggle in a Sentence

smuggle

verb
  • The paintings had been smuggled out of the country before the war.
  • We smuggled his favorite sandwich past the nurse.
  • He was arrested for smuggling drugs into the country.
  • They smuggled immigrants across the border.
  • They were smashed up and came to me and asked me to smuggle out some tapes.
    David Marchese David Marchese, New York Times, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The three swords that were attempted to be smuggled into the US arrived from Russia and the axe head from Ukraine, the agency said.
    Christina Maxouris, CNN, 12 Mar. 2023
  • Much of this contraband had been smuggled in by drones that drop off items in prison yards, often overnight.
    Perry Stein, Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2024
  • He is accused of smuggling people and causing the shipwreck.
    Karam Shoumali, BostonGlobe.com, 1 July 2023
  • An unknown number of sacred statues of Hindu deities were stolen and smuggled abroad in the past.
    Binaj Gurubacharya, Fortune, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Princip’s likeness had to be sawed into pieces and smuggled out of Europe, losing its nose in the fray.
    Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 20 Apr. 2023
  • Malik and Deevers attempt to smuggle Vesili out through the garage while Ressler and Dembe hold off the shooters in a firefight.
    Tanya Melendez, EW.com, 27 Feb. 2023
  • The video falsely claimed Bellingcat found evidence that Ukraine had smuggled weapons to Hamas.
    Brian Fung, CNN, 10 Oct. 2023
  • The group has successfully used tunnels to smuggle goods and fighters into, out of, and around Gaza for years.
    Daniel Byman and Seth G. Jones, Foreign Affairs, 14 Oct. 2023
  • The first involved building a fleet of fast blockade runners that could get past the Union ships and smuggle necessary weapons into the South.
    Barbara Spindel, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Mar. 2023
  • She had been kidnapped from Japan two years earlier, stuffed into a bag and smuggled on a boat to North Korea.
    Francine Uenuma, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2024
  • Dhows are small fishing or cargo vessels that are sometimes used by Iran to smuggle weapons.
    Luis Martinez, ABC News, 21 Jan. 2024
  • Rather than reporting the find to the government, as required by law, locals sold the statues, which were then smuggled out of the country.
    Teresa Nowakowski, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Apr. 2023
  • The father showed his son his new U.S.-made M16 assault rifle, smuggled in from Jordan.
    Fatima Abdulkarim, Washington Post, 3 Mar. 2023
  • Mummert pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle goods and was sentenced last year in Plano to three years in prison.
    Kevin Krause, Dallas News, 31 July 2023
  • Yet the Dodgers have shared little, leaving those on the other side of their walled compound to rely on gear smuggled in by missionary groups.
    Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times, 4 May 2023
  • If your gentleman friend and his daughter have to smuggle their times together past you, there is a reason.
    Abigail Van Buren, oregonlive, 17 Feb. 2023
  • How do people smuggle out something that was on fire only moments ago?
    Kelly Conaboy, Bon Appétit, 29 Nov. 2023
  • What drew me to this story, in part, was the appalling charge at its heart—that monkeys were being captured from the wild and smuggled into this enterprise.
    Erika Fry, Fortune, 27 Jan. 2024
  • The film looks at how the young man’s dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled into the U.S. and sold to a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles.
    Brent Lang, Variety, 15 Mar. 2024
  • All other fireworks — such as those that shoot into the air and are prevalent on July 4 and New Year’s Eve — were probably bought out of state and smuggled in.
    Salvador Hernandez, Los Angeles Times, 30 Dec. 2023
  • Thomas Jones, a Confederate agent and Cox’s foster brother, agreed to smuggle the men to safety.
    Vanessa Armstrong, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Mar. 2024
  • Yet Smith has smuggled in another story, one that had been hiding inside it all along.
    Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2023
  • Local activists smuggled supplies and essentials over the fence to the Ukrainian soldiers.
    Haiane Avakian, The Atlantic, 27 Sep. 2023
  • These pages have a midnight sort of impact many novelists would kill to smuggle into their fiction.
    Dwight Garner, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Jones remembers visiting King in jail there two times a day, smuggling in sheets of paper beneath his shirt.
    Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY, 23 Aug. 2023

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