Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use debug in a sentence

30 example sentences · verb, noun

Debug means to search for and eliminate malfunctioning elements or errors in something, especially a computer program or machinery. Example: “Flag the debug option before running the program.”

Examples of debug by meaning

verbTo search for and eliminate malfunctioning elements or errors in something, especially a computer program or machinery.

  • It ranged from the pre-design development of essential components, through the stage of type test and flight test and "debugging" right through to later development of the engine to higher powers and efficiency.1945, The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, volume 49, page 183
  • It debugs all program errors, including those that are hardware initiated.1970, Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, volume 2, page 36
  • Additionally, it's up to you to remember to remove this cron entry when you've debugged the firewall.2015, Steve Suehring, Linux Firewalls: Enhancing Security with nftables and Beyond, page 140

verbTo remove a hidden electronic surveillance device from (somewhere).

  • Typical fees: $75 to check a particular telephone, $125 to debug one room, $500 to debug a suite of offices— all plus expenses and transportation.1969, John Millar Carroll, The Third Listener: Personal Electronic Espionage, page 30

verbTo remove insects from (somewhere), especially lice.

  • Frank's occupation is that of debugging the roses and beating up the paths for miscellaneous insects.1905 June 15, A. J. R., “With the Long Bow”, in The Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, Minn., retrieved 15 Feb 2017, page 14
  • You can debug yourself at home with various over-the-counter medications.1999, Stephen E. Goldstone, The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex: A Medical Handbook for Men, page 59
  • If you find nits, it's time for some serious debugging.2011, Jay Heinrichs, Home Remedies from a Country Doctor

nounThe action, or a session, of reviewing source code to find and eliminate errors.

  • It may appear odd in the example that the no debug all command was entered before and after the debug was done.2009, Dale Liu, Cisco CCNA/CCENT Exam 640-802, 640-822, 640-816 Preparation Kit
  • What should be the next steps following a test failure during debug?2019, James K. Peckol, Embedded Systems: A Contemporary Design Tool, page 539

More sentences with debug

  • Flag the debug option before running the program.From the entry flag
  • Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap.From the entry walk
  • Diagnosing this software application's problems is a wild-goose chase because it is built in an environment that has poor debugging tools.From the entry wild-goose chase
  • You need to set the debugging property to "verbose".From the entry property
  • The database admin switched on query logging for debugging purposes.From the entry query
  • In the future, most crucially, Wikilambda will continue to be debugged and extended by its core developers.2026, Michael Falk, “Wikilambda the ultimate: the Wikimedia foundation’s search for the perfect language”, in AI & Society: Knowledge…. From the entry abed
  • In debug mode, a compiled binary will include debugging symbols in the DWARF debugging format.2019, Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta, Mastering Rust, 2nd edition, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 500. From the entry dwarf
  • Programmers call the computer equivalent "confessional debugging." "Hey, Eric, can you look at this code?2004 May 25, “Mary K. Kuhner”, “Re: rec.arts.sf.compostion^([sic]) FAQ”, in rec.arts.sf.composition (Usenet). From the entry confessional debugging
  • The first is that once you request in-process debugging, the profilee will run slower.2003, John Robbins, Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows. From the entry profilee
  • Many programmers find “confessional debugging” to be one of the most useful techniques around.2001, Paul Litwin, Ken Getz, and Mike Gunderloy, Access 2002 Desktop Developer’s Handbook, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, →ISBN, page 948. From the entry confessional debugging
  • Walkbacks, inspectors, and debuggers are the heart of Smalltalk's debugging facilities.1992, UNIX Review, volume 10, page 42. From the entry walkback
  • That was the long way around of saying that I tend to use terribly crude debugging techniques with unsafe printfs.2009, Peter Seibel, Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, →ISBN, page 268. From the entry long way around
  • Typically, you'll debug your model by making changes, recalcing, and testing within the spreadsheet, then trying Prepare and Run.1988 December 5, InfoWorld, volume 10, number 49. From the entry recalc
  • Debugging facilities are few but powerful: snapshots, tracing, and autopsy.1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in…. From the entry autopsy
  • When someone mispatches a cable, the subsequent repair job or hasty "What's wrong with this?" debugging often causes additional failures in short order.2000, Network World, volume 17, number 50, page 82. From the entry mispatch
  • The Monitor has special facilities for those of you who are determined to use machine language to simplify creating, writing, and debugging machine language programs.1979, Apple II Reference Manual, Cupertino: Apple Computer Inc., page 48. From the entry machine language
  • You pull the trigger and a dry fog of vaporized insecticide billows out as you move around the outdoor area to be debugged.1967 August, Popular Science, volume 1919, number 2, page 138. From the entry dry fog
  • Invisible Debugger, commonly referred to as ID, a utility program in the PDP-1 time sharing system written to aid in the debugging of other programs.1966 May 20, MIT Electrical Engineering Department, chapter ID, in PDP-23-1, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of…. From the entry debugger
  • The debug mode enables full flight around every level, plus you can add a whole mess of objects to the stage at the press of a button.2017, Jeff Ramos, How to access and use Sonic Mania’s debug mode, Polygon. From the entry debug mode
  • If you believe the system can merrily proceed despite an assertion failure, code the exception handler to log the error, leaving debugging breadcrumbs behind, and return.2004, Jack Ganssle, The Firmware Handbook, page 276. From the entry breadcrumb
  • The reason is that it is more cost effective to debug and troubleshoot the new environment than to demigrate and lose all the data transactions completed under the new technology.2002, Charles V. Breakfield, Roxanne E. Burkey, Managing Systems Migrations and Upgrades, page 196. From the entry demigrate

Meaning of debug

  1. verb To search for and eliminate malfunctioning elements or errors in something, especially a computer program or machinery.
  2. verb To remove a hidden electronic surveillance device from (somewhere).
  3. verb To remove insects from (somewhere), especially lice.

Full definition of debug

Questions about debug in a sentence

How do you use debug in a sentence?
Debug is used as a verb and noun. For example: “Flag the debug option before running the program.”
What is a short sentence with debug?
“Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap.”
What does debug mean?
Debug means to search for and eliminate malfunctioning elements or errors in something, especially a computer program or machinery.

Source and license

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