Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use atrophy in a sentence

16 example sentences · noun, verb

Atrophy means a reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use. Example: “Brain scans were graded on a five-point scale of atrophy.”

Examples of atrophy by meaning

nounA reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use.

  • Now that chatbots are going the way of Google—moving from the miraculous to the taken-for-granted—the anxiety has shifted, too, from apocalypse to atrophy.2025 October 26, Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Age of De-Skilling”, in The Atlantic

verbTo wither or waste away.

  • I can feel my brain beginning to atrophy already.1987 June 13, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic)
  • Petersburg, but then, with a jolt, it begins to atrophy.2013 October 13, Ellen Barry, “The Russia Left Behind: A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin”, in The New York Times

verbTo cause to waste away or become abortive; to starve or weaken.

  • Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion2001, “Schism” (04:35-05:10 from the start), in Lateralus, performed by Tool

More sentences with atrophy

  • Brain scans were graded on a five-point scale of atrophy.From the entry grade
  • Mild vermian volume loss and progressive chiasmatic atrophy (open arrow) are seen (B) on follow-up.2016, Thierry A. G. M. Huisman, Andrea Poretti, The Pediatric Cerebellum, page 380. From the entry interfoliate
  • Porphyria and Kindler syndrome were excluded by lack of photosensitivity, scarring, atrophy, and sclerodermoid changes.2015, Subhash Kashyap, Vinay Shanker, Neelam Sharma, “Ectodermal Dysplasia-Skin Fragility Syndrome: A Rare Case Report”, in Indian Journal…. From the entry sclerodermoid
  • Gross Anatomical — in the form of contractures, atonicities, hypertrophies, hyperplasms, atrophies, fatty infiltrations, tumors, etc.1940, Carter Harrison Downing, Simplified Spinal Technique, page 3. From the entry atonicity
  • Neoliberalism has entailed the destruction of workers' organizations across the Global North and the atrophying of mass associational politics more generally.2022, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, “Online far-right ecologism and far-right movements”, in The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the…. From the entry atrophying
  • The disease can be classified into a dry or nonexudative form (geographic atrophy) and a wet or exudative form (neovascular AMD).2015 June 4, Su Zhang, Hongwei Gu, Nan Hu, “Role of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor γ in Ocular Diseases”, in Journal of…. From the entry nonexudative
  • Charcot praised Duchenne's work on tabes, and gave the first description of sclerosis and the peroneal type of muscular atrophy.1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 526. From the entry peroneal
  • Thus the observed differences in GM atrophy rates in this study were most likely not caused by pseudoatrophy, but by true differences in volume loss.2015 August 18, “A Longitudinal Study of Disability, Cognition and Gray Matter Atrophy in Early Multiple Sclerosis Patients According to…. From the entry pseudoatrophy
  • During followup neopenile erectile function was preserved and the flap remained at about the same size as at initial transfer with no atrophy noted.2009, YQ Zhao, J Zhang, MS Yu, DC Long, Functional restoration of penis with partial defect by scrotal skin flap, n The Journal of Urology. From the entry neopenile
  • It affects most congressmen and senators sooner or later: an atrophy of the sense of humility, a swelling of the glands of arrogance.1991, Tom Sehler, When Reason Sleeps, page 4. From the entry Potomac fever
  • The vast majority of infant deaths due to atrophy and athrepsy also occurred in the first semester (72% and 83%, respectively), though a quarter of them were of neonates.2021 May 4, Michail Raftakis, “Why were infants dying and what were they dying from? Infant mortality patterns in the Greek urban centre…. From the entry athrepsy
  • It is essential to define if the brain atrophy detected in the patient is caused by normal aging or dementive disease or overlapping of both processes.2008, Ewa Pietka, Jacek Kawa, Information Technologies in Biomedicine, page 157. From the entry dementive

Meaning of atrophy

  1. noun A reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use.
  2. verb To wither or waste away.
  3. verb To cause to waste away or become abortive; to starve or weaken.

Full definition of atrophy

Questions about atrophy in a sentence

How do you use atrophy in a sentence?
Atrophy is used as a noun and verb. For example: “Brain scans were graded on a five-point scale of atrophy.”
What is a short sentence with atrophy?
“I can feel my brain beginning to atrophy already.”
What does atrophy mean?
Atrophy means a reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: atrophy (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 atrophy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/atrophy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.