vilify
Americanverb (used with object)
-
vilifies,
present (3rd person singular)
-
vilified,
past participle, past
-
vilifying
present participle
-
to speak ill of; defame; slander.
- Synonyms:
- blacken, asperse, abuse, malign, calumniate, disparage, depreciate
- Antonyms:
- commend
-
Obsolete. to make vile.
verb
-
to revile with abusive or defamatory language; malign
he has been vilified in the tabloid press
-
rare to make vile; debase; degrade
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
vilifysimple
-
vilifiessimple
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have vilifiedperfect
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has vilifiedperfect
-
am vilifyingprogressive
-
are vilifyingprogressive
-
is vilifyingprogressive
-
have been vilifyingperfect progressive
-
has been vilifyingperfect progressive
Past
-
vilifiedsimple
-
had vilifiedperfect
-
was vilifyingprogressive
-
were vilifyingprogressive
-
had been vilifyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of vilify
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English word from Late Latin word vīlificāre. See vile, -fy
Explanation
To vilify someone is to spread nasty stories about them, whether true or not. The verb vilify comes from the same root as the word vile and is a negative word if ever there was one! One way to remember the word is to think about how it sounds — like the word villain (which is unrelated and comes from villa). This suggests that when you vilify someone, you make them sound villainous. So avoid spreading vile words that vilify another and make him or her seem like a villain.
Vocabulary lists containing vilify
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Power Suffix: -fy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
And while I like the idea of “replacing opposition with cooperation,” imagining that I’d vilify my kid turns me off.
From Slate ● May 10, 2026
Despite testing positive, another reader scolded, I “continue to vilify vaccine skeptics generally, and … Kennedy specifically. Truly fascinating.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2025
She smiles often and laughs easily, a very American trait that helped vilify her in European eyes during her trial.
From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2025
“Ricky Cobb was a productive citizen of this community, and we will not let you vilify him,” family attorney Bakari Sellers said at a news conference.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 17, 2024
"Probably some kind of evidence they could use to vilify Tariq," Sloan says.
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
But the organisation says, in reality, it "glorifies thinness and vilifies weight gain" and "promotes disordered eating behaviours."
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2025
The latter is a woodsy, whimsical track that puts Swift in the hot seat as she vilifies herself as the albatross and that "she is here to destroy you."
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2024
"The departure of Meghan and Harry from royal ranks has been far more damaging to the monarchy than the coverage that vilifies them understands or accepts," she told Reuters.
From Reuters ● Dec. 15, 2022
The show, by contrast, is more blunt in its critique; it actively vilifies those who try to decide, unilaterally, how the world should pay for its sins.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 17, 2019
Or he who now vilifies, then admires him?
From The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece by Francis W. (Francis Whiting) Halsey
Knox told the Telegraph newspaper, external last week: "I don't joke about Meredith's death. I joke a lot about how I was vilified, but I don't joke about her murder."
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
"I don't joke about Meredith's death. I joke a lot about how I was vilified, but I don't joke about her murder," she had told the Telegraph newspaper, external.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
By 1996, Richard Horton, then the editor of the Lancet, the British medical journal, could marvel: “He is now perhaps the most vilified scientist alive.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 29, 2026
Often, he is ridiculed, vilified and told he is no longer welcome.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 26, 2026
“A money manager does not go from being a near nobody to being nearly universally applauded to being nearly universally vilified without some effect.”
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
"The Madrid region will never contribute to the vilifying of artists and even less so to that of the most universal of all singers: Julio Iglesias," she posted on social media.
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2026
They hope the results, instead of vilifying logging companies, can help spur a conversation about what forest managers can do better.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2025
We can have a discussion about spending without vilifying Republicans.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2024
According to Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi and for a time the official legal theorist of the party under Adolf Hitler, one builds and maintains a community by identifying and vilifying its enemies.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2023
Adams read in the newspapers that Jefferson had compiled “a Magazine of slips of newspapers, and pamphlets, vilifying, calumniating and defaming you.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
