sabotage
Sabotage isn't very nice: It's when you ruin or disrupt something by messing up a part of it on purpose. Loosening the blades on your competitor's ice skates would definitely be considered sabotage.
Sabotage comes from the French word saboter, which literally means “walk noisily.” That's funny, because the last thing you'd want to do when committing an act of sabotage is stomp around and get caught. It’s believed that sabotage came into use in 1910 as a noun, and then later in 1918 as a verb. Apparently, people only became so cruel in the last century or so.
Usage Examples
“I know he’s with Rae now, and I wouldn’t do anything to sabotage that. But I wanna make it clear to him that he’s more important to me than my...reputation, I guess.”
The indictment charged eleven of us with complicity in over two hundred acts of sabotage aimed at facilitating violent revolution and an armed invasion of the country.
He learned that fishplates and bolts had been found several feet from the main track, giving rise to the suspicion, never subsequendy confirmed, of sabotage.
“But you’ve gone along this whole time. You were on the train that brought us here. You weren’t exactly trying to sabotage the tracks.”
n. /vt. 阴谋破坏
The attack is being seen as a deliberate attempt to sabotage the peace talks.
At least 80 people have died in a derailment of a luxurious train in eastern India, which some government officials say could have been caused by terrorist sabotage.
2022-10-28
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