Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use default in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Default means the condition of failing to meet an obligation. Example: “He failed to make payments on time, and he is now in default.”

Examples of default by meaning

nounThe condition of failing to meet an obligation.

  • He failed to make payments on time, and he is now in default.
  • You may cure this default by paying the full amount within a week.

nounThe condition of being an obligation that has not been met.

  • The deadline has passed, so the debt is now in default.

nounA loss incurred by failing to compete.

  • The team's three losses include one default.

nounA selection made in the absence of an alternative.

  • The man became the leader of the group as a default.
  • Overall the signage at NIE has the appearance being a top-down artefact driven by institutional policy with English set as the default language.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual...

nounA value used when none has been given; a tentative value or standard that is presumed.

  • If you don't specify a number of items, the default is 1.

nounA failing or failure; omission of that which ought to be done; neglect to do what duty or law requires.

  • This evil has happened through the governor's default.

verbTo fail to fulfill a financial obligation.

  • to default on a loan

verbTo lose a competition by failing to compete.

  • If you refuse to wear a proper uniform, you will not be allowed to compete and will default this match.

More sentences with default

  • Manual controls allow the user to override the camera's default settings.From the entry override
  • No one could think of a better name, so we chose "Strawman" by default.From the entry by default
  • If he wins an election, it will only be by default.From the entry by default
  • The United States is in an awkward situation with debt default looming.From the entry situation
  • Some people like fancy pingers with extra features, but I always use the default ping application.From the entry pinger
  • Files in the Internet zone are blocked by default, as a security measure.From the entry zone
  • I thought I liked the default settings, but it turned out that it's your presets I prefer.From the entry preset
  • By default, the summary tasks are bold and outdented, and the subtasks are indented beneath them.From the entry outdent
  • Defaults in America's mortgage lending businesses are causing a ripple effect through the major banks in other continents.From the entry ripple effect
  • Java has the access specifiers private, protected, public, and the default specifier package that does not have a keyword.From the entry access specifier
  • A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish".From the entry defaultist
  • Roughly two-thirds of Americans default to the General American accent, with other dialects like Southern, AAVE, and Chicano usually being considered lower prestige outside of entertainment and politics.From the entry American
  • Left to their own devices, chatbots will default to odd or euphemistic phrasing, Ms.2026 February 8, Alexandra Alter, “The New Fabio Is Claude”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry manhood
  • She is a Mi'qitten so by default she is adorable and cute.2022 December 18, Electronic-Message93, Reddit. From the entry Mi'qitten
  • His default response is protective concern, and he doesn't understand why you transform.2021 November 12, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Friday, Nov 12, 2021. From the entry shrug off
  • Homie has a huge strength buff default because of his extra chromie.2021 September 8, “Garret, who has Down Syndrome, bench pressed a school record 355 pounds”, in Reddit, r/nextfuckinglevel, archived from…. From the entry chromie
  • Denial and disbelief tend to be the default, not a pragmatic embracing of unthinkables and unpalatables.2019, Paul Williams, Andreas Krebs, The Illusion of Invincibility. From the entry unpalatable
  • To default on this service is to lose citizenship within the pueblo.2019, Michaela Django Walsh, “Partiendo la madre: Borders, Thresholds, and Transnational Sites of Belonging”, in Chiricú Journal, volume…. From the entry community service
  • By default, Remix is set to autocompile as you are typing.2018, Joseph J. Bambara, Paul R. Allen, Kedar Iyer, Rene Madsen, Solomon Lederer, Michael Wuehler, Blockchain: A Practical Guide to…. From the entry autocompile
  • Nim's default import behavior allows flexible Uniform Function Call Syntax (UFCS) and operator overloading.2017, Dominik Picheta, Nim in Action, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN. From the entry UFCS
  • The default site that is created by the Visual Studio project scaffolder uses Bootstrap by default.2016, William Penberthy, Beginning ASP.NET for Visual Studio 2015, page 71. From the entry scaffolder
  • The presented bicomposite material managed to provide an microenvironment that altered the default healing response towards regeneration.2016 January 15, “New Amniotic Membrane Based Biocomposite for Future Application in Reconstructive Urology”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry bicomposite
  • By default, the swappiness value on a Linux server is typically set to 60.2016, Jay LaCroix, Mastering Ubuntu Server, page 187. From the entry swappiness
  • By default, some TCP tunables have a value that is too low.2013, Sander van Vugt, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Administration: Real World Skills for Red Hat Administrators. From the entry tunable
  • Where are you going to imply default probabilities from, let alone credit volatilities and credit-underlying "correlations”?2013, Damiano Brigo, Massimo Morini, Andrea Pallavicini, Counterparty Credit Risk, Collateral and Funding, →ISBN. From the entry Duckburg
  • The computer usually defaults to autocorrecting certain spellings and capitalising first words of sentences.2012, Margaret Mallet, The Primary English Encyclopedia, page 26. From the entry autocorrect
  • In effect, and by default, book-building was taught and learned textlessly.2012, John Miles Foley, Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind, page 115. From the entry textlessly
  • This is the iPhone lock screen with its default Earth wallpaper.2008, Erica Sadun, Taking Your iPhone to the Max, Apress, →ISBN, page 27. From the entry swipe
  • Any other default paragraphs should still be dark gray based on the embedded style.2007, Simon Collison, Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional. From the entry in-line
  • Is there a way to tell it to pick a diff one by default?2006 August 25, jes.t.er, “Character names”, in alt.games.warcraft (Usenet). From the entry diff

Meaning of default

  1. noun The condition of failing to meet an obligation.
  2. noun The condition of being an obligation that has not been met.
  3. noun The original software programming settings as set by the factory.

Full definition of default

Questions about default in a sentence

How do you use default in a sentence?
Default is used as a noun and verb. For example: “He failed to make payments on time, and he is now in default.”
What is a short sentence with default?
“to default on a loan”
What does default mean?
Default means the condition of failing to meet an obligation.

Source and license

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