Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use define in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Define means to determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly. Example: “I define myself as a techno-anarchist.”

Examples of define by meaning

verbTo determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.

  • the defining power of an optical instrument
  • The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning vortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.2013 July-August, Lee S. Langston, “The Adaptable Gas Turbine”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)

verbTo express the essential nature of something.

  • I define myself as a techno-anarchist.
  • Your past mistakes do not define who you are.
  • Cantor defined a one-to-one correspondence between the points of the square and the points of the line segment.2013 May-June, Brian Hayes, “Crinkly Curves”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 178

verbTo state the meaning of a word, phrase, sign, or symbol.

  • The textbook defined speed as velocity divided by time.

verbTo demark sharply the outlines or limits of an area or concept.

  • to define the legal boundaries of a property
  • Neither Marx nor Engels ever clearly defined the concept of class, and the last chapter of Volume III of Capital, which was to treat of this question, breaks off after three or four paragraphs.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon...
  • But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 164

nounA kind of macro in source code that replaces one text string with another wherever it occurs.

  • From the computer programming perspective, Java looks like C and C++ while discarding the overwhelming complexities of those languages, such as typedefs, defines, preprocessor, unions, pointers, and multiple inheritance.1996, James Gosling, Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment
  • Anyone who has attempted to do OO programming in a conventional language using defines will find out that it is impossible to realize the benefits easily, if at all, without compiler support.1999, Ian Joyner, Objects unencapsulated: Java, Eiffel, and C++, page 309

More sentences with define

  • Statisticians often define a recession as negative real GDP growth during two consecutive quarters.From the entry recession
  • Velocity is a vector defined by the speed of an object and its direction.From the entry vector
  • Your dictionary defines "brave" as "courageous", and "courageous" as "brave". That's a circular definition.From the entry circular
  • You will find the term defined at the end of Roman one.From the entry roman
  • The ability to reproduce is a defining characteristic of living organisms.From the entry defining
  • The Gergonne triangle is defined by the three touchpoints of the incircle on the three sides.From the entry touchpoint
  • Labor Day weekend is the long weekend that defines the end of Summer in the US.From the entry long weekend
  • Research is needed to define extrahepatic processes for uptake and distribution.From the entry extrahepatic
  • I know what that word means, but would be hard put to define it.From the entry hard put
  • Where defined, the first derivative of a monotone function never changes sign, although it may be zero.From the entry monotone function
  • The poster has transvestigated this celebrity because of her defined jawline.From the entry transvestigate
  • A micro-enterprise is defined as a company or business having 5 or fewer employees and a low seed capital.From the entry enterprise
  • Security is defined as the condition of not being threatened.From the entry condition
  • Category theory defines a very general concept of limit.From the entry limit
  • The database schema defines how the tables are organized.From the entry schema
  • Formal series are defined without any reference to convergence.From the entry formal
  • We defined a conceptual model before designing the real thing.From the entry conceptual
  • The snow was extremely hard and there was a well defined path all the way up to the bergshrund.From the entry bergshrund
  • SGML is the metagrammar in which HTML is defined.From the entry metagrammar
  • The topological charge of families of lattice gauge fields is defined fermionically via families index theory for the overlap Dirac operator.From the entry fermionically
  • The standard of ascertainability requires class members in a class action to be defined based on objective criteria.From the entry ascertainability
  • Nope, it's not an edit requiring suppression as defined by that page. Perhaps we need a Wikipedia:Requests for revdel page.From the entry revdel
  • Parameters are like labelled fillable blanks used to define a function whereas arguments are passed to a function when calling it, filling in those blanks.From the entry argument
  • In the context of computer science, lexical analysis can be defined as the conversion of a stream of characters to a stream of meaningful tokens.From the entry stream
  • You will find your obligations in this regard clearly defined in Part D, Subpart b, Section 8 of the second Addendum to the contract.From the entry subpart
  • The program defines two subrange types.From the entry subrange
  • An oath may be defined as either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity.From the entry sacrality
  • It can be proved that a Dedekind domain (as defined above) is equivalent to an integral domain in which every proper fractional ideal is invertible.From the entry Dedekind domain
  • How the cat runs is defined in the method run() of the class Cat, which overrides the same method with the same signature of superclass called Mammal.From the entry override

Meaning of define

  1. verb To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
  2. verb To settle, decide (an argument etc.).
  3. verb To express the essential nature of something.

Full definition of define

Questions about define in a sentence

How do you use define in a sentence?
Define is used as a verb and noun. For example: “I define myself as a techno-anarchist.”
What is a short sentence with define?
“I define myself as a techno-anarchist.”
What does define mean?
Define means to determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.

Source and license

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