Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use cautious in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Cautious means using or exercising caution; careful; tentative. Example: “He took a few cautious steps toward the cave.”

Examples of cautious by meaning

adjectiveUsing or exercising caution; careful; tentative.

  • He took a few cautious steps toward the cave.

More sentences with cautious

  • Be cautious talking about religion or politics, lest you touch off an argument.From the entry touch off
  • He was very cautious with his words and gave no hostages to fortune.From the entry hostage to fortune
  • You should be cautious due to the Somali pirates.From the entry pirate
  • They’re going to be cautious about where they pick their moments.2024 December 7, Zachary B. Wolf, “What will be the signature achievement of Trump 2.0?”, in CNN. From the entry five-alarm
  • History tells us stodgy, cautious stuff, cardigan-football is the way to go here.2022 November 21, Barney Ronay, “Iran’s brave and powerful gesture is a small wonder from a World Cup of woe”, in The Guardian. From the entry digression
  • Then in a cautious drone, she looked away and began to share her heart-spent regrets.2014, Catherine Kaufman, Beloved Healer, →ISBN. From the entry heart-spent
  • This was not the cagey, cautious approach which had been widely anticipated.2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily Record. From the entry unscathed
  • Introverts tend to be closed, timid, cautious, and prone to pessimism.2011, Barbara Killinger, Achieving Inner Balance in Anxious Times. From the entry forethinker
  • If she had a choice between being supercautious or supersorry, she'd pick cautious every time.2006, Marie Ferrarella, The Woman Who Wasn't There, page 58. From the entry supersorry
  • From my p.o.v., they seemed to be great but cautious friends.1998, Frank Castelluccio, Alvin Walker, The Other Side of Ethel Mertz: The Life Story of Vivian Vance, Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, →ISBN…. From the entry p.o.v.
  • The example, however, should serve to make us cautious when taking other fundamental steps in the future.1979, Lawrence G. Goldberg, Lawrence J. White, editors, The Deregulation of the Banking and Securities Industries, Lexington Books, →ISBN…. From the entry that ship has sailed
  • But even so, the gay boys who are out cruising aren’t being especially cautious.1970, Gerald Walker, Cruising, New York: Stein and Day, →ISBN, page 104. From the entry cruising
  • The cautious woman alert to her queenship began to supersede the gentle girl of the princessship.1962, Mary Milbank Brown, The Secret History of Jeanne D'Arc: Princess, Maid of Orleans. From the entry princessship
  • The A & P wasn't alone in its cautious approach to supermarketing.1951, Collier's Illustrated Weekly, volume 127. From the entry supermarketing
  • "Better be very careful and utmostly cautious, sir," the negro warned him.1920, Jack London, Hearts of Three, Kessinger, published 2003, →ISBN, page 23. From the entry utmostly
  • However, total abstention is not on the rise despite the decline in consumption, which suggests more cautious drinking habits.2025 December 31, Zoe Wood, “Drinkers turn to low-alcohol beverages so they can 'coast' through season”, in The Guardian, page 3. From the entry coasting
  • Again, Hanoians are more cautious than Saigoneers, as more claim that they almost never sharing their locations (15% vs 22%).2020 July 24, “Data Privacy – Are We Too Confident or Too Reckless?”, in Indochina Research. From the entry Hanoian
  • You're cautious.You're far more conservative than Iam.”2013, Felicia Mason, Sweet Accord, →ISBN. From the entry closeminded
  • Klatsassin knew he had to be cautious.2009, Rich Mole, The Chilcotin War: A Tale of Death and Reprisal, Heritage House Publishing, page 64. From the entry Euclataw
  • It is difficult to delineate the territories here, but I'd be cautious to lump everything broadly under "Marxism".2007 March 6, Markus E Leypold, “ML vs. Lisp”, in comp.lang.functional (Usenet), retrieved 03 May 2022. From the entry Trotzkism
  • Big mistake: I make many medium-sized mistakes but am far too namby and cautious to make a really big one.2006, MediaGuardian, Rick Peters, quoting Phil Hilton, Who’s Who in the Media: An Essential Guide to the Most Powerful Movers and Shakers…. From the entry namby
  • The adult worries much less; is cautious, sensible and knows how to protect emself and eir system from attack and error.2004 March 31, Sue Thomas, Hello World : travels in virtuality, Raw Nerve Books, →ISBN, →OL, page 78. From the entry eir
  • Thus although people routinely email other people worldwide, they are more cautious about sending queries to remote databases.1996, Ian Wand, Robin Milner, Computing Tomorrow: Future Research Directions in Computer Science, page 121. From the entry filespace
  • The only significant problem encountered is that pilots must be particularly cautious about underboosting the engines during the drops.1973, United States. Naval Air Systems Command, United States. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Historical Center (U.S.)…. From the entry underboost
  • He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered.2025 June 26, Kasra Naji, “When Iran's supreme leader emerges from hiding he will find a very different nation”, in BBC. From the entry well-advised
  • I could live with real people and enjoy real friendships, not the cautious, constricted conversations of winks and nods among fellow doublethinkers.2021 December 2, Rod Dreher, “Natan Sharansky: The Power Of Truth”, in The American Conservative. From the entry doublethinker
  • We were the self-controlled, cautious, nifty merchants, decorous fiddlers of accounts, hoarders of wealth, excellent bribers, family and community creatures governed by manners.2005, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The drama of my life (in The Independent online…. From the entry fiddler
  • Although this story predated the Kunkle episode, something told me that with dime-droppers afoot, both men and women naturally become more cautious.2005, Richard F. Miller, A Carrier at War: On Board the USS Kitty Hawk in the Iraq War. From the entry dime dropper
  • "Because of the tendency to oversocialize females in our society, girls learn early to (over)control impulses, to be tractable, obedient, cautious, and self-sacrificing."1984, Jeanne H. Block, Sex Role Identity and Ego Development. From the entry oversocialize
  • At Hulutao, cautious Admiral Barbey again refused to go ashore because a launch from his flagship was fired upon by several riflemen, supposedly Chinese communists.1946, George Moorad, Behind the Iron Curtain, Fireside Press, page 295. From the entry Yingkow
  • It was, in essence, a continuation of the Mayite policy—which itself was little more than a continuation of the cautious engagement that had been in place for decades.2022 August 2, Tom McTague, “Why Britain Changed Its China Stance”, in The Atlantic. From the entry Mayite
  • In the space beyond that, Rose saw a deer, with abbreviated velvet antlers and a cautious yet somehow also bored mien, considering her through dark, strangely human eyes.2020, Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind, Bloomsbury (2023), page 76. From the entry deer
  • There are times, Machiavelli concedes, where it might be more advantageous to be cautious and bide one's time in order to ascertain the dispensation of the goddess more clearly.2019, Andrew Herman, The “Better Angels” of Capitalism, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry bide one's time
  • Therefore, we should be cautious in using only one or a few of these feathered paravians as a proxy for the ancestral morphological, functional, and behavioural conditions of birds.2015 July 16, Junchang Lü, Stephen L. Brusatte, “A large, short-armed, winged dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Early…. From the entry paravians
  • People may want more clearance time for fast-moving traffic than they do for slow traffic, and cautious people may want a longer clearance time than do high risk takers.2010, William R. Wiener, Richard L. Welsh, Bruce B. Blasch, Foundations of Orientation and Mobility, page 394. From the entry clearance time
  • There are cases where some Moroccan women are unnecessarily cautious, careful and polite, trying either to under-accommodate or over-accommodate their use of address expressions on some occasions.2001, Fatima Bennouiss, Moroccan Female Power Negotiation, page 27. From the entry over-accommodate
  • Now, all of a sudden, he found himself cautious, trying to be a politician, and the result was, he expressed his frustrations roundaboutly instead of directly.1990, Ernest Hebert, Live Free or Die. From the entry roundaboutly
  • If I may be permitted an editorial aside, allow me to say that in my opinion we must be cautious about passing moral judgement upon the Gileadeans.1985, Margaret Atwood, “Historical Notes”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 314. From the entry Gileadean
  • As the author has established, what must make one cautious about such a judgement is the fact that the time was past for an antipapacy installed by the emperor.1980, Philosophy and History, page 105. From the entry antipapacy

Meaning of cautious

  1. adjective Using or exercising caution; careful; tentative.

Full definition of cautious

Questions about cautious in a sentence

How do you use cautious in a sentence?
Cautious is used as an adjective. For example: “He took a few cautious steps toward the cave.”
What is a short sentence with cautious?
“Klatsassin knew he had to be cautious.”
What does cautious mean?
Cautious means using or exercising caution; careful; tentative.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cautious (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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