Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use calculator in a sentence

37 example sentences · noun

Calculator means a mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations; (now usually) an electronic one specifically. Example: “The calculator on a bookkeeper's desk in the 1950s was an adding machine with mechanical guts.”

Examples of calculator by meaning

nounA mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations; (now usually) an electronic one specifically.

  • electronic calculator; pocket calculator
  • The calculator on a bookkeeper's desk in the 1950s was an adding machine with mechanical guts.
  • I told him to hand me a calculator and he jokingly placed an adding machine at my side.

nounA person who performs mathematical calculation.

  • During the war, his grandmother had worked at the Bletchley Park decoding station as a calculator.
  • First, many real-world investors bear little resemblance to the cool calculators of efficient-market theory: they're all too subject to herd behavior, to bouts of irrational exuberance and unwarranted panic.2020, Paul Krugman, Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future, page 145

nounA person who calculates (in the sense of scheming).

  • He revealed himself to be a cold-blooded calculator out to sabotage his colleagues.

More sentences with calculator

  • An abacus is of little value when you have an electronic calculator.From the entry value
  • Although they were once in the forefront of consumer electronics, the calculators have become a mere commodity.From the entry commodity
  • My novelty calculator works fine but it hurts my hands to press the keys.From the entry novelty
  • Electronic calculators soon displaced the older mechanical kind.From the entry displace
  • Scott Flansburg can outadd a calculator.From the entry outadd
  • Take a simple calculator, or, if you are so inclined, do the sums in your head.2013 February 1, Stephanie Retchless, Are All Banks Bastards?, eBookIt.com, →ISBN. From the entry joke Joyce
  • “They never shower with us,” says Shipley, glancing up from his calculator.1982, Robert Lipsyte, Inside Sports, page 71. From the entry winky
  • So key in a few gigundo numbers and let the calculator do some gargantuan number-crunching.1974, Wallace Judd, Games, Tricks, and Puzzles for a Hand Calculator, dilithium Press, published 1978, page 25. From the entry gigundo
  • Picture a girl, we usually call her a computress, using a desk calculator.1962, The Volta Review, →ISSN, page 395. From the entry computress
  • You can find evaporation calculators online like this one.2024 August 12, LackingUtility, SqoobySnaq, “ELI5: How is Planck length the shortest distance possible? Couldn’t you just split that…. From the entry quectosecond
  • No, you did not mispunch the calculator.2015, Tom Bassarear, Meg Moss, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, page 278. From the entry mispunch
  • It is harder to make the case for other pocket calculators, whose appeal was rooted in efficiency and convenience.2012 March 4, Alice Rawsthorn, “Farewell, Pocket Calculator?”, in The New York Times. From the entry make the case for
  • Need to describe a hand-held mathematical calculator?[2010 January 9, Randall Stross, “Failing Like a Buggy Whip Maker? Better Check Your Simile”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry buggy whip
  • The Junior Certs are allowed to bring calculators into their maths exams, and one of them forgot hers.2009 November 10, Claudia Carroll, If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back: the laugh-out-loud page-turner about the ultimate second…. From the entry Junior Certs
  • Nowadays, statisticians prefer statistical software packages or graphing calculators, rather than random-number tables, to obtain simple random samples.2008, Neil A. Weiss, “[The Nature of Statistics] Simple Random Sampling”, in Introductory Statistics (A Custom Edition for Rio Salado…. From the entry random-number generator
  • Many hand calculators can understand a Turing complete language.2005, Ben Klemens, Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, Brookings Institution Press, →ISBN, page 35. From the entry Turing complete
  • There are good biological reasons why we have not become just superbrain, rational calculators, even were this biologically possible.2003, Anthony J Sanford, Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird, The nature and limits of human understanding. From the entry superbrain
  • She flushed and began to run her calculator again.1980, Stephen King, The Mist, Viking Press. From the entry checker
  • Programming can be considered as being similar to writing instructions for a girl who is working with a desk calculator.1963, Paul L. Garvin, editor, Natural Language and the Computer, New York: McGraw-Hill, page 233. From the entry computress
  • I have seen the desk calculator become a necessary instrument for every scientist who is doing quantitative work.1951, IBM Corp., Proceedings, Computation Seminar, page 13. From the entry octogenarian
  • Lacking his francophone dulciloquence, however, and having a hitch in my style born of ethical hesitations, I failed to sell a single calculator.2016, Richard Dietrich Maddox, Remembering Eternity, volume 1 (The Sun Inside), book 1 (The Game Begins), →ISBN, page 181. From the entry dulciloquence
  • So Mary Bell, their year head, called the kid's mother and said find the calculator and get it back to the school asap.2009 November 10, Claudia Carroll, If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back: the laugh-out-loud page-turner about the ultimate second…. From the entry Junior Certs
  • I feel it would be like a calculator, I can no longer do large mathematical problems in my head due to lack of practice.2000 April 10, Timothy A. Leerhoff, “Personal vehicles with GPS systems - Opinions, please”, in novell.community.chat (Usenet), retrieved…. From the entry GPS system
  • There were Mongols hawking sheepskins and Chinese vending calendars and pocket calculators, North Koreans flogging jewelry and Vietnamese mongering shirts and leather jackets.1992 May 11, “(please specify the article title)”, in The New Yorker, volume 68, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry monger
  • As they were approaching bankruptcy from being knocked out of the calculator market, they began development on the first commercially available microcomputer, the Altair.1980, InfoWorld, volume 2, number 20. From the entry market
  • Common numbers like distances would never be expressed in megameters or nanomiles — it would bring us too close to the Dilbertian world of pocket protectors and calculator holsters.2009, J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures, page 15. From the entry megameter
  • Steve Wozniak may be a well-heeled philanthropist and world-renowned tinkerer, but at one time he had a Joe job as an engineer in Hewlett-Packard's calculator division.2007 February 23, Chris Seibold, “February 23, 1973: Hitting the clock like a regular fella”, in Applematters.com, retrieved 25 May 2007. From the entry joe job
  • During World War II, scientific laboratories had rooms full of people doing different parts of a complicated calculation using pencil and paper, slide rules, and mechanical calculators.2001, Michael L. overton, Numerical Computing with IEEE Floating Point Arithmetic, SIAM, page 1. From the entry computer
  • Notice that each time the calculator balance becomes positive (zero or greater), the dollar item that forces this balance to become positive is selected for examination.1987, Roger H. Hermanson, Robert H. Strawser, Auditing Theory and…. From the entry positive
  • But it's also because the Cambridge is British made by Sinclair Radionics Ltd, Europe's largest calculator manufacturer, with all the cost advantages of scale that this entails.1973 August 2, New Scientist, volume 59, number 857, page 273. From the entry radionics
  • If they were left on for longer they tended to over-heat and, eventually, to blow up, which is reportedly what happened when the diplomat forgot to turn off his calculator.2012 March 4, Alice Rawsthorn, “Farewell, Pocket Calculator?”, in The New York Times. From the entry over-heat

Meaning of calculator

  1. noun A mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations; (now usually) an electronic one specifically.
  2. noun A person who performs mathematical calculation.
  3. noun A person who calculates (in the sense of scheming).

Full definition of calculator

Questions about calculator in a sentence

How do you use calculator in a sentence?
Calculator is used as a noun. For example: “The calculator on a bookkeeper's desk in the 1950s was an adding machine with mechanical guts.”
What is a short sentence with calculator?
“electronic calculator; pocket calculator”
What does calculator mean?
Calculator means a mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations; (now usually) an electronic one specifically.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: calculator (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.

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