sweep aside

phrasal verb

swept aside; sweeping aside; sweeps aside
: to treat (something) as not important : to ignore (something)
He swept aside questions about his son's arrest.
He swept aside their objections, refusing to change his plans.

Examples of sweep aside in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web While there are faint glimmers of a moral conscience in some of Stan’s early scenes, such concerns are quickly swept aside once Donald starts seeing the results Cohn gets with bullying chicanery. David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 May 2024 Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who swept aside concerns about his health after experiencing two freezes on camera last year, plans to step down from leadership at the end of this year. Kayla Guo, New York Times, 17 May 2024 The Senate on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment case against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, voting along party lines before his trial got underway to sweep aside two charges accusing him of failing to enforce immigration laws and breaching the public trust. Luke Broadwater, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2024 The South Carolina Gamecocks enter the Final Four as the overwhelming favorite to win the national championship after a undefeated campaign in which the team has swept aside everyone and everything put before it. Ben Morse, CNN, 5 Apr. 2024 But the establishment of democracy was not about sweeping aside the corrupt institutional landscape that had been created by the dictatorship. Eduardo Mello, Foreign Affairs, 1 Oct. 2018 What this interpretation leaves out, according to Perl-Rosenthal, is that all the transatlantic revolutions began to unfold at an accelerating pace as the initial revolutionary vanguard was swept aside. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 25 Mar. 2024 The last time parliamentary and presidential elections coincided was in 1964, when Britain’s Labour Party ousted the long-governing Conservatives in October, and less than a month later, a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, swept aside a challenge from a right-wing Republican insurgent. Mark Landler, New York Times, 5 Jan. 2024 The tension remains, until the story needs it to be swept aside for a grander statement. David Fear, Rolling Stone, 6 Dec. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sweep aside.' 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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Cite this Entry

“Sweep aside.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweep%20aside. Accessed 23 May. 2024.

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