How to Use insidious in a Sentence

insidious

adjective
  • Most people with this insidious disease have no idea that they are infected.
  • This feeling is a form of self-doubt and one of the most insidious forms.
    — Kevin Kruse, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2024
  • The first, and perhaps most insidious type of fear is in the sphere of our self.
    — Nell Derick Debevoise, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2021
  • The most insidious form of oppression is that which comes at the hands of your own.
    — Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 28 Jan. 2022
  • The story kind of starts to have this insidious effect on you.
    — Roxanne Fequiere, ELLE, 5 Dec. 2022
  • With the insidious nature of this thing, any of us could fall victim.
    — Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Sep. 2020
  • But the long-term story is more insidious.
    — Bill Frist, Forbes.com, 18 Sep. 2025
  • The efforts were large and small, from the insidious to old-fashioned dirty tricks.
    — Washington Post, 17 Feb. 2018
  • That was what was so insidious about the process, Albury thought.
    — New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021
  • Second, and maybe even more insidious, is the mommy track thing.
    — Emily Peck, Fortune, 17 Nov. 2021
  • Its aims are quieter and more insidious.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 31 Jan. 2026
  • In the calmest, most insidious way, Dorothy had been kidnapped.
    — Hadley Meares, Los Angeles Magazine, 7 June 2018
  • Even more insidious, the larva then forces its victim to drill a hole too small for its own escape.
    — Andrew Forbes, National Geographic, 25 Jan. 2017
  • But there's a more subtle and insidious form of racist stereotyping that can be hard to pin down.
    — Kristen Rogers, CNN, 5 June 2020
  • Among the most insidious claims is that people won’t return to cities for years, if ever.
    — Peter Kern, Fortune, 15 Mar. 2021
  • Eating ice would be just one of the many insidious symptoms that would take over my life throughout the next year.
    — L'oréal Blackett, refinery29.com, 19 Sep. 2024
  • There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons at the root of that insidious process.
    — Guy Martin, Forbes.com, 27 June 2025
  • One of the most insidious things about coronavirus is that people die alone.
    — Maggie Fox, CNN, 2 July 2020
  • But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious.
    — New York Times, 19 Mar. 2021
  • But most of its failures are subtler, more insidious.
    — Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 10 June 2026
  • The first is the ongoing insidious change to an ever-warmer world.
    — Jim Williams, Star Tribune, 16 Feb. 2021
  • The twice-monthly mahjong game also fell victim to the insidious virus.
    — oregonlive, 9 June 2021
  • The real answer is that what your sister is up against is insidious sexism, at a grand scale.
    — Liana Finck, The New Yorker, 27 Dec. 2020
  • One of the less insidious reasons people may choose to ghost a partner is to spare their feelings.
    — Mark Travers, Forbes.com, 18 Aug. 2025
  • The takeover of the arts is less violent and a bit more insidious, but just as dangerous in its own right.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 8 Feb. 2026
  • But as many lives as this insidious virus has taken, and will take in the months to come, heart disease will inevitably take more.
    — Fortune, 17 Nov. 2020
  • Yet others thought that since most guys do the asking, this reinforced the norm of who pays in an insidious way.
    — Santul Nerkar, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2024
  • Melanoma can be much more than an insidious spot on the skin, more difficult to treat than getting a mole removed.
    — Magdalene Taylor, Allure, 26 May 2021
  • This recipe is more insidious because, Nadine points out, the ants walk all over it, then take it back to their nest.
    — Isabel Garcia, House Beautiful, 7 Feb. 2020
  • But this time, as one of the most racist and insidious laws ever created in this country was passed, the leagues slept.
    — Mike Freeman, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2021

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