How to Use gentrify in a Sentence

gentrify

verb
Definition of gentrifynext
  • As the neighborhood became gentrified, the people who had lived there for many years could no longer afford it.
  • Scroll through the gallery above to see where the fastest-gentrifying ZIP codes are in America.
    — William Axford, Houston Chronicle, 6 Mar. 2018
  • Guggenheim and his creative team just decide to gentrify the Glades and then move on.
    — Clarkisha Kent, The Root, 11 Sep. 2017
  • City officials have denied that the shooting was the product of a push to gentrify.
    — Barnini Chakraborty, Fox News, 15 Sep. 2020
  • With prices sure to rise, will the Corktowners who have outlasted the bad times now be forced out by gentrifying forces?
    — John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, 9 July 2018
  • At the time, of course, when this came out in 1994, I was said to be like a conspiracy kook to think that someone would be trying to gentrify the Bay Area, much less Oakland.
    — Eric Johnson, Recode, 8 Oct. 2018
  • The family has always been on the front lines of gentrifying Brooklyn.
    — Elizabeth Greenwood, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2018
  • After the storm in 2005, the adjacent neighborhood began to gentrify, and sometime between then and the abandonment of the naval base locals named it the End of the World.
    — Nathaniel Adams, Chron, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Torres wasn’t convinced that the group can suppose to speak for the neighborhood, which sits in the corner of rapidly-gentrifying Five Points.
    — Alex Burness, The Denver Post, 28 Oct. 2019
  • American cities are looking more and more European these days, as the rich gentrify the downtowns and the poor are banished to the outer suburbs.
    — Jonah Goldberg Tribune News Service (tns), Star Tribune, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Gentrifying neighborhoods—whether deep in Brooklyn or on a hillside of Rio de Janeiro—are where those forces clash.
    — Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, 21 May 2017
  • The city of Naples, Keeys said, has worked to gentrify the area in recent years but has not built a sea wall that could provide more protection during hurricanes.
    — Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN, 5 Oct. 2022
  • That’s one of the highest in the nation and a driving force behind a wide range of new food choices being offered in a rapidly gentrifying city.
    — Courtland Milloy, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2017
  • The patrons are a mix of people from the neighborhood of Pendleton, which seems to be pretty rapidly gentrifying.
    — Polly Campbell, Cincinnati.com, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Around 2005, Fishtown began to gentrify, and a young, racially diverse, middle-class group of people moved in.
    — Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2020
  • But light technicians, grips and actors won’t be the first to gentrify the area, where cement mixers continue to queue at concrete plants.
    — New York Times, 4 Dec. 2020
  • The blocks surrounding Brewnuts have been quickly gentrifying with lots of new restaurants and funky boutiques.
    — Larry Olmsted, USA TODAY, 12 Oct. 2017
  • This is, at least, the perspective of the novel’s narrator, Lizzie, a grad-school dropout living at the frontier of gentrifying Brooklyn.
    — Lauren Oyler, The New Yorker, 12 Feb. 2020
  • Neighbors are suspicious of school district plans for the building, which include ending high school programs there, just as the area starts to gentrify.
    — Aubrey Nagle, Philly.com, 4 June 2018
  • And to women such as Stephanie, a single mom who supports her two young daughters dancing, who are caught in the middle of a proxy battle for the gentrifying city’s future.
    — Cara Kelly, USA TODAY, 23 Dec. 2019
  • Long Island City was quickly gentrifying before the new tax law.
    — Bernard Condon, The Seattle Times, 13 Nov. 2018
  • Her goal was to gentrify him sufficiently to win him a scholarship to Harvard.
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
  • Then in 2010, just as Harlem started gentrifying, Samuelsson opened a restaurant there called Red Rooster.
    — Kelli Kennedy, OrlandoSentinel.com, 18 June 2018
  • And while Windham has been gentrifying for years, Mr. Fromer said the town had not yet been overrun by high-end retailers and luxury amenities.
    — Claire Fahy, New York Times, 17 Dec. 2023
  • In extreme cases, digital nomads can gentrify an area to the extent that locals can no longer afford to live in it—or even feel welcome to do so.
    — Diana Hubbell, Condé Nast Traveler, 14 June 2021
  • On the other hand, the liberal affluent class might decide to look for another city to gentrify.
    — Fortune, 22 Jan. 2018
  • The Warriors could gentrify the NBA in one fell swoop, pricing out every would-be superteam in the process with a product that might be literally unbeatable.
    — Rob Mahoney, SI.com, 27 June 2018
  • In 1968, when the building was just a vacant lot in the fast-gentrifying South End, King spearheaded protests to demand affordable housing.
    — Danny McDonald, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Sixth Street serves a crucial role in the city’s housing and social service infrastructure, a refuge for the city’s poor in rapidly gentrifying South of Market.
    — J.k. Dineen, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 Mar. 2018
  • The government intends to demolish the buildings in disrepair and start from the ground up, but their plans to relocate the residents don’t consider their specific needs (such as the size of each family) and aims for a blanket gentrifying fix.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 29 Jan. 2024

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