Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use constrain in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Constrain means to force physically, by strong persuasion or pressuring; to compel; to oblige. Example: “But it's not just Castlefield Corridor capacity that constrains services.”

Examples of constrain by meaning

verbTo keep within close bounds; to confine.

  • But it's not just Castlefield Corridor capacity that constrains services.2020 January 2, Philip Haigh, “Is there relief to congestion along Castlefield Corridor?”, in Rail, page 23

More sentences with constrain

  • A knot can be defined as a non-self-intersecting broken line whose endpoints coincide: when such a knot is constrained to lie in a plane, then it is simply a polygon.From the entry knot
  • We should be encouraging and supporting expensive bi-mode freight locomotives, especially where capacity is constrained.2024 October 30, Paul Clifton, “How can freight be a major part of rail's future?”, in RAIL, number 1021, page 57. From the entry encourage
  • The user's feet are constrained on the soleplate by the toe band (h).2010, Doina Pisla, Marco Ceccarelli, Manfred Husty, New Trends in Mechanism Science: Analysis and Design, page 321. From the entry soleplate
  • These findings indicate that clinicians and religious leaders should not assume that intermarriage constrains levels of intimacy.2007 June 8, Patrice E. Heller, Beatrice Wood, “THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES ON MARITAL INTIMACY: INTERMARRIAGE…. From the entry intramarriage
  • Putting a firm constraint on some elements of the development vector would definitely constrain economic activity.1993, Horst Siebert, Economic Growth in the World Economy: Symposium 1992, J.C.B. Mohr, →ISBN, page 228. From the entry envirocentric
  • Transsexual people (and others) need to realize that treatment is constrained by the frontiers of medical knowledge.1992, Dallas Denny, “Commentary: The Importance of Informed Consent”, in Chrysalis Quarterly, volume 1, number 4, →ISSN, page 55, column 3. From the entry phalloplastician
  • They use words like appraisal, evaluation, assessment, their Roget's litany, to avoid the constrained "test" connotation.1987, Robert Mills Gagné, Instructional Technology: Foundations, page 364. From the entry Roget's
  • Current problem solving systems are constrained in their applicability by inadequate world models.1983, James F. Allen, Johannes A. Koomen, “Planning using a temporal world model”, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint…. From the entry world model
  • An extended digit is constrained to betanumeric characters, which are alphanumerics minus vowels and the letter 'l' (ell).2024 April 25, Wikipedia contributors, “Check digit”, in English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. From the entry betanumeric
  • After unposing the rays for all frames they obtain a visual hull that constrains the body shape in a canonical T-pose.2020, Marcus Magnor, Alexander Sorkine-Hornung, Real VR - Immersive Digital Reality, page 198. From the entry T-pose
  • Instead, think of Congress and the Fed as interdependent institutions — a political relationship that constrains the Fed’s conduct.2017 October 19, Sarah Binder, Mark Spindel, “The Fed Claims to Be Independent. That’s Mostly a Myth.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry interdependent
  • So when I'd hear people tell me – in many contexts – that timing is everything, I'd naturally feel uncomfortably constrained.2017, Janice Presser, Timing Isn't Everything. Teaming Is., Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 35. From the entry timing is everything
  • This definition provides a lot of leeway, but at the same time constrains the possible scope of uptalk.2016, Paul Warren, “Introduction – Why ‘Uptalk’?”, in Uptalk: The Phenomenon of Rising Intonation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press…. From the entry uptalk
  • Is it more or less constrained than English?2016, Kate Burridge, Tonya N. Stebbins, “Syntax: The Structure of Sentences”, in For the Love of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics…. From the entry Yodaspeak
  • The functional form of these computations is not constrained in this definition, theoretically allowing for the representation of any intervariate relationship.2016, Tylar Murray, Eric Hekler, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Daniel E. Rivera, Andrew Raij, “Formalization of Computational Human Behavior Models…. From the entry intervariate
  • In other words, although protomatter could exist as any particular substance, substantial form constrains protomatter into a particular substance.2013, Mark Graves, Insight to Heal: Co-Creating Beauty amidst Human Suffering, →ISBN, page 98. From the entry protomatter
  • The world “as it is in itself” does not need anything explained; only that which is epistemically constrained does.2013 January, Brian W. Dunst, Embodying Social Practice: Dynamically Co-Constituting Social Agency, dissertation submitted in partial…. From the entry apparatūs
  • The absence of comparatives and trend data constrains the conclusions.2010, Barry Smith, Introductory Financial Accounting and Reporting, page 171. From the entry comparative
  • Entries on her personal Twitter stream are all written as senryu, a syllabically constrained poetic form like haiku.2009 April 22, Lawrence Downes, “Take 1 Recipe, Mince, Reduce, Serve”, in New York Times. From the entry syllabically
  • An Abecedarian is any poem constrained by alphabetical order.2008, Erich J. Goller, Groovy, page 165. From the entry abecedarian
  • Paleointensity cannot be predicted by theory or from numerical simulation, since the mechanisms involved in the geodynamo are not sufficiently constrained.2007, Joseph S. Stoner, Guillaume St-Onge, “Magnetic Stratigraphy in Paleooceanography”, in Proxies in Late Cenozoic Paleoceanography…. From the entry paleointensity
  • The third perspective of globalisation, transformationalism, recognises the contingency of action and the historicity of structure as enabling and constraining globalisation.2002, Reza Banakar, Max Travers, An introduction to law and social theory, page 313. From the entry transformationalism
  • As a semiotic for reasoning, logic is registerially quite constrained: it operates under a number of connexional assumptions about valid reasoning.1999, Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, Construing Experience Through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition, page 37. From the entry registerially
  • Also, since the pushers are gimbled, the limb is no longer constrained to be in a fixed position.1984, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual Conference, IEEE ... Frontiers of Engineering and Computing in Health Care. From the entry gimble
  • This need to adhere to scriptural and traditional accounts of Satan constrained dramatic innovation in his long-established character.1983, Wendy Griswold, “The Devil's Techniques: Cultural Legitimation and Social Change”, in American Sociological Review, volume 48…. From the entry orthodoxy
  • These general requirements constrain the oculometric method to an optical observation of the area within and around the pupil.1966, John Merchant, "Oculometry", Optical Engineering, vol. 4, no. 2, (Google search result). From the entry oculometric
  • Every part of every algorithm is there, and can be contested on the platform itself, even if that contestation may be culturally and politically constrained.2026, Michael Falk, “Wikilambda the ultimate: the Wikimedia foundation’s search for the perfect language”, in AI & Society: Knowledge…. From the entry defeasible
  • It's been a story of planning in bite-sized chunks, making the most of soft-start strategies, managing constrained depot capacity, and battling legacy technology.2025 August 6, Richard Wilcock, “Old units... new lease of life”, in RAIL, number 1041, page 31. From the entry bite-sized
  • Next, they operate in constrained worlds.2021 December 18, “The billionaire battle for the metaverse”, in The Economist, →ISSN. From the entry bugbear
  • Historical reconstructions will follow ‘Skinner’s maxim’, and will constrain themselves to offering only descriptions that the writer in question could in principle endorse.2020, Patrick Fessenbecker, Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature: Literary Content as Artistic Experience, →ISBN, page 122. From the entry Skinner's maxim
  • We show that the requirement of neuronal implementability of the inverse generative function strongly constrains the neuronal transfer function, essentially only allowing threshold-linear neurons.2015 December 16, “Hierarchical Novelty-Familiarity Representation in the Visual System by Modular Predictive Coding”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry implementability
  • However, the current existing commercial yeasts present some constrains, namely reducing the uniqueness of wine bouquet, characteristic of the different vitivinicultural regions throughout the world.2015 November 25, “Exploring the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Volatile Metabolome: Indigenous versus Commercial Strains”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry vitivinicultural
  • This nonbirefringence constrains the spacetime constitutive tensor to high precision to a core metric form with an axion degree and a dilaton degree of freedom.2015, Wei-Tou Ni, “Equivalence Principles, Spacetime Structure and the Cosmic Connection”, in arXiv. From the entry nonbirefringence
  • Because JavaScript objects are not constrained to predefined interfaces as they are with .NET objects, you can set expando properties on any object.2009, Ted Pattison, Daniel Larson, Inside Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0. From the entry expando
  • This study aims to determine the UV photodesorption yields and to constrain the photodesorption mechanisms of three astrochemically relevant ices: CO, N₂ and CO₂.2009, Astronomy & Astrophysics, volume 496, page 277. From the entry astrochemically
  • It constrained governments, businesses and labour unions to collaborate in planning increased rates of output and the conditions likely to facilitate them.2005, Tony Judt, “The Rehabilitation of Europe”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN. From the entry stymie
  • The Forestry Commission generally operated a freedom to roam policy whereby public access was not constrained except where young trees had been planted.1998, Andrew Light, Jonathan M. Smith, Philosophy and Geography II: The Production of Public Space, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 179. From the entry freedom to roam
  • Less obviously, mothers may eventually be able to gain by laying more, until eventually they are constrained by the costs of eggs.1997, Douglas W. Mock, Geoffrey A[lan] Parker, The Evolution of Sibling Rivalry (Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution), Oxford…. From the entry siblicide
  • Much modern signwriting is also done very cheaply, in the fastest possible way, and creativity is constrained by this commercial pressure as well.1991, Anthony John Lewery, Popular art: past and present. From the entry signwriting

Meaning of constrain

  1. verb To force physically, by strong persuasion or pressuring; to compel; to oblige.
  2. verb To keep within close bounds; to confine.
  3. verb To reduce a result in response to limited resources.

Full definition of constrain

Questions about constrain in a sentence

How do you use constrain in a sentence?
Constrain is used as a verb. For example: “But it's not just Castlefield Corridor capacity that constrains services.”
What is a short sentence with constrain?
“Next, they operate in constrained worlds.”
What does constrain mean?
Constrain means to force physically, by strong persuasion or pressuring; to compel; to oblige.

Source and license

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