How to Use manipulate in a Sentence

manipulate

verb
  • He's accused of trying to manipulate the price of the stock.
  • She knows how to manipulate her parents to get what she wants.
  • He felt that he had been manipulated by the people he trusted most.
  • The baby is learning to manipulate blocks.
  • The program was designed to organize and manipulate large amounts of data.
  • He's always been good at manipulating numbers in his head.
  • As part of the experiment, students manipulated light and temperature to see how it affected the plants.
  • The doctor manipulated my back.
  • The mechanical arms are manipulated by a computer.
  • The editorial was a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion.
  • The goal is for your hair to be less manipulated by putting it in braids.
    — Akili King, Essence, 17 Jan. 2024
  • These guys saw an opening here to manipulate all of us.
    — Billy Eichner, Rolling Stone, 21 Sep. 2025
  • These were people who could play on that and manipulate him.
    — Jesse Hyde, Rolling Stone, 21 Oct. 2025
  • But the same tools can be used to try and manipulate voters at key moments.
    — Fahad Shah, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 May 2024
  • So there are all these ways companies can manipulate who can see a post.
    — Washington Post, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Don’t work with a salesperson who tries to manipulate you just to close a deal.
    — cleveland, 14 Mar. 2020
  • And then also kind of learning how to manipulate the puck and your speed and things like that.
    — Helene St. James, Detroit Free Press, 7 Oct. 2017
  • Inmates may try to manipulate them, throw urine on them or even attack them.
    — Ames Alexander and Gavin Off, charlotteobserver, 31 May 2017
  • The muscle still tried to manipulate the kneecap to avoid painful grinding in the joint.
    — Longreads, 25 May 2021
  • Don’t be afraid to do your own thing and to say no to anyone trying to change or manipulate you.
    — Eugenia Last, The Mercury News, 8 Mar. 2024
  • And that is where they can be manipulated.
    — Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 6 Jan. 2026
  • Trump has been thrashing about for months looking for ways to manipulate the midterms.
    — Mary Ellen Klas, Twin Cities, 21 Aug. 2025
  • This person set him up and was manipulated in many ways.
    — Laura Sirikul, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
  • But even then, our team of artists got in there and just started manipulating things.
    — Damon Wise, Deadline, 20 Apr. 2026
  • The shocking ease with which the people around him can manipulate him?
    — Scott Meslow, GQ, 9 Feb. 2018
  • Users can manipulate posts with gifs, polls and location tags, as well as record live video.
    — Arizona Republic, azcentral, 30 June 2018
  • Like these are guns, weapons to manipulate people.
    — Los Angeles Times, 26 May 2026
  • Mimicry was just one facet of how Grande manipulated her voice over the course of the episode.
    — Esther Zuckerman, The Atlantic, 13 Oct. 2024
  • The gates manipulate the qubits and represent time steps as well.
    — Nikolai Sinitsyn, Scientific American, 21 Sep. 2020
  • But all of it had been manipulated.
    — Felipe Schrieberg, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2025

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