Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use anticipate in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Anticipate means to act before (someone), especially to prevent an action. Example: “The advocate plans to anticipate a part of her argument.”

Examples of anticipate by meaning

verbTo take up or introduce (something) prematurely.

  • The advocate plans to anticipate a part of her argument.

verbTo know of (something) before it happens; to expect.

  • to anticipate the pleasures of a visit
  • to anticipate the evils of life
  • Please anticipate a journey of an hour from your house to the airport.

verbTo eagerly wait for (something).

  • Little Johnny started to anticipate the arrival of Santa Claus a week before Christmas.

More sentences with anticipate

  • We do not anticipate there will be US boots on the ground to help quell the violence.From the entry boot
  • When they added up the vaccine doses from all known and anticipate sources, they didn't have enough.From the entry add up
  • The harvest was overpredicted because the forecasters did not anticipate the dry weather.From the entry overpredict
  • How in thunderation could anyone anticipate a result like this?From the entry in thunderation
  • Anticipating Wally's inevitable sarcasm, Boris let fly with a few cutting remarks in a stunning act of prevenge.From the entry prevenge
  • In your pasture management program, you need to anticipate that goats will try to chew on just about anything; that's the nature of the beast.From the entry nature of the beast
  • It is adverse selection that leads US workers who anticipate high family medical expenditure to seek employers with superior health insurance coverage for their employees.From the entry adverse selection
  • During the concert Chris Martin appeared to reference the kiss-cam couple and to anticipate the fallout.2025 July 18, Rory Carroll, “Are they ‘having an affair’ or just shy? The couple caught on Coldplay’s kiss cam”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry kiss cam
  • In contrast to cyberprotection, cyberresilience anticipates that a cyberattack will succeed.2022 September 30, Michael Coden, “Letters: Against Cyberattacks”, in The New York Times. From the entry preattack
  • Can't have my girl's tootsies cold." "Don't say aw again," Eve ordered, anticipating.2014, J. D. Robb, Festive in Death, →ISBN. From the entry tootsie
  • To prevent this type of emergency, the pilot had to anticipate the tail swing with rudder movements.2013, Bert Frandsen, Hat in the Ring: The Birth of American Air Power in the Great War, →ISBN. From the entry tail swing
  • My advice to you, as a novice WordPresser, can be described in one word: anticipate.2013, Jesse Friedman, Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress: Plan, Theme, Build, Launch, New Riders, Peachpit, →ISBN. From the entry WordPresser
  • We want our airplane pilots to anticipate failed engines as well as happy landings.2009, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, →ISBN, page 198. From the entry happy landings
  • She could get weak, just anticipating him, a real knee buckler.2008, Everett Stephenson Jr., Resolution, page 195. From the entry knee-buckler
  • We anticipate that this effort will take approximately six months to complete.2008 August 27, Sewell Chan, “U.S. Officials Will Review Pollution in Waterway”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26…. From the entry CERCLA
  • Her turn ends with an invitation to the Doctor to formulate, ‘so’, which he appears to anticipate.2008, Peter Grundy, Doing Pragmatics, third edition, Routeledge, page 168. From the entry metasequential
  • I predicted that “we can anticipate such a description of noncanine involvement.”2007 February 11, William Safire, “Culpa for Mayor”, in New York Times. From the entry noncanine
  • American President Thomas Jefferson, anticipating a possible war between the United States and France, kept the St.2004, Michael B. Stack, Toussaint of Haiti, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 303. From the entry St. Dominguan
  • She was anticipating the upcoming truck ride to Tihwa, the capital of Sinkiang, with a certain detachment.1995, Peter Rand, China Hands: The Adventures and Ordeals of the American Journalists Who Joined Forces with the Great Chinese Revolution…. From the entry Tihwa
  • He feels a tingling behind his ears, anticipating the scalpel and the drill.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 399. From the entry scalpel
  • That said, the passage just looked at anticipates rather than participates in greatness.1989, Michael O'Neill, The human mind's imaginings: conflict and achievement in Shelley's poetry, Oxford University Press, USA. From the entry overwrite
  • This diminutive bilingual glossarium seems to anticipate Bar Bahlûl’s Lexicon syriacum!1971, Irfan Shahîd, The Martyrs of Najrân: New Documents, Société des Bollandistes, page 36. From the entry glossarium
  • Terry's fist lashed out, but Simpson, anticipating the blow, stepped quickly to one side.1936, F.J. Thwaites, chapter XX, in The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards, published 1940, page 205. From the entry reel
  • I anticipate that you would be quite safe there, or I would not suggest it, sir.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries. From the entry clump
  • In some cases, workers anticipating a re-org may stop working altogether since they expect their project to get canned.2023 November 28, JS Tan, “It's All Bullshit”, in The Baffler. From the entry re-org
  • Overall, the MOE and social education institutions are anticipating that the local people will wholeheartedly welcome these much-anticipated events.2022 February 11, ““Now We Speak Our Own Languages” The Ministry of Education calls on social education institutions to promote local…. From the entry Min Dong
  • It was early in the morning; Diego was already awake, anticipating the job that his grandpa had given him.2020, Marvin Guadalupe Romero, Mestizo the Old Man, →ISBN. From the entry matanza
  • The shift to a trefled arch above the former scene anticipates the splayed trefled arch in the scene above.2018 March 6, Donna L. Sadler, Touching the Passion — Seeing Late Medieval Altarpieces through the Eyes of Faith, BRILL, →ISBN, page 65. From the entry trefled
  • “Cool and brisk in the morning, warming to the low seventies by afternoon,” Ruby said anticipating the weatherman's words.2014, Fern Michaels, Vegas Sunrise, Kensington Books, page [245]. From the entry weatherman
  • I was so nervous in a way, anticipating the mindblow!2014, The Jesus Lizard Book, →ISBN, page 56. From the entry mindblow
  • And children can't help but anticipate the holiday season.2009, Matthew Krantz, Fundamental Analysis For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN. From the entry earnings season
  • Nevertheless, they anticipate and lead the way for the automated Dungeon Master, white cell, and automated story generation of the future.2006, Nicholas V. Iuppa, Terry Borst, Story and Simulations for Serious Games: Tales from the Trenches, page 118. From the entry dungeon master
  • Pitfalling can be by omission, when grouping members fail to anticipate and avoid, or to address and work through, a problem.2005, John O. Burtis, Paul D. Turman, Group Communication Pitfalls, page 65. From the entry pitfalling
  • A respected member of the clergy and the community, Dimmesdale is a wonderful study in psychology anticipating the dark Dostoyevskyian reflections.1997, Indian Journal of American Studies, volume 27, page 4, column 1. From the entry Dostoyevskyian
  • The broader manner attested at Hejiacun anticipates a style which survives into the second half of the eighth century.1995, William Watson, The Arts of China to AD 900, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 240, column 2. From the entry Harqin

Meaning of anticipate

  1. verb To act before (someone), especially to prevent an action.
  2. verb To take up or introduce (something) prematurely.
  3. verb To know of (something) before it happens; to expect.

Full definition of anticipate

Questions about anticipate in a sentence

How do you use anticipate in a sentence?
Anticipate is used as a verb. For example: “The advocate plans to anticipate a part of her argument.”
What is a short sentence with anticipate?
“to anticipate the evils of life”
What does anticipate mean?
Anticipate means to act before (someone), especially to prevent an action.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anticipate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use anticipate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/anticipate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.