How to use detonate in a sentence
25 example sentences · verb
Detonate means to explode, blow up. Example: “The engineers detonated the dynamite and watched the old building collapse.”
Examples of detonate by meaning
verbTo cause to explode.
- The engineers detonated the dynamite and watched the old building collapse.
verbTo express sudden anger.
- Then he detonated.2013, Michael J. Restrepo, The Custody Officer, page 116
More sentences with detonate
- He wired the cap to the bundle of dynamite, then detonated it remotely.From the entry cap
- Ammonium nitrate can detonate if severely shocked.From the entry shock
- The bomb was detonated by remote control.From the entry remote control
- We entered an area where a hyperbomb had been detonated during the war.2014, J. Michael Reeves, Terry Austin, Byron Preiss, I—Alien, J. Boylston, →ISBN. From the entry hyperbomb
- In January, the first ever isomer bomb was detonated in front of millions of viewers.2009, David Hambling, “Red Mercury Mania Returns as Saudis Buy Up “Mini-Nuke” Material”, in Wired. From the entry isomer bomb
- Fired in groups, these rockets detonated when they contacted a submarine.2003, Nautical Research Journal, volume 48, page 199. From the entry mousetrap
- The other guided but passed behind the MIG and did not detonate.1976, Robert Frank Futrell, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia-- aces and aerial victories, 1965-1973. From the entry go ballistic
- The composition of the fallout can also be changed by "salting" the weapon to be detonated.1964, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, page 417. From the entry salt
- The pandemic preparation timebomb detonated to devastating effect; a number of other timebombs are on the shortest of fuses.2023 June 30, Marina Hyde, “The tide is coming in fast on Rishi Sunak – and it’s full of sewage”, in The Guardian. From the entry time bomb
- The first missile sped by without detonating.2015, Rick Campbell, Empire Rising. From the entry juke
- They work by association, detonating a collision of connotations.2012, Jonathan Gray, Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, →ISBN. From the entry walk in straight lines
- The Taliban had buried a triple mine in the road a week ago and remotely detonated it under a Spartan.2009, Ed Macy, Hellfire, HarperPress, page 343. From the entry RPG
- The standing woman is overweight, with scraped-back and barretted bleach- blond hair and a jowly face of detonated capillaries.2004, Glen Duncan, Death of an Ordinary Man, →ISBN. From the entry barrette
- OR ELSE A bomb on the bus will be detonated.1994 June 12, Pat H. Broeske, “Film: Death is Hard . . . Reincarnation Is Easy”, in New York Times, retrieved 02 Aug 2014. From the entry small, unmarked bills
- The latter are small craft filled with explosives to be detonated from the control radio of the Apex boat.1946, Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, Report of Operations, volume 1, page 73. From the entry drone
- Before screaming “Fire in the hole!” and detonating a cache of confiscated fireworks on a residential street two years ago, Los Angeles police Det.2023 July 14, Brittney Mejia, Libor Jany, Richard Winton, “LAPD refused to ID officers behind a huge fireworks explosion. Now we have…. From the entry fire in the hole
- Oil can affect the detonating properties of the primer pellet, and can be the cause of misfires if too much oil gets into the primer.2016, Steve Sieberts, Gun Digest Shooter's Guide to Competitive Pistol Shooting, →ISBN, page 224. From the entry primer
- The proxy mines detonate when anyone comes near them (including the one who set the mine) and are absolutely wonderful for laying traps.2006: "ProtectorOne", Perfect Dark: Multiplayer Scenario FAQ http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/n64/file/198275/43519. From the entry proxy mine
- That is the tenthousandfold detonating power of all bombs and grenades that exploded during world war II, demanding about 55 million human lives.1981, The Marxist Review, page 430. From the entry tenthousandfold
- Last month, Tucker Carlson’s genial interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes detonated a bomb that further fractured the Trump-era conservative movement he once helped galvanize.2025 November 15, Robert Draper, “Once He Was ‘Just Asking Questions.’ Now Tucker Carlson Is the Question.”, in The New York Times, New…. From the entry genial
- Thank you for all the years of patiently being there, especially on those dark and stormy nights when things detonated unexpectedly and I needed rescuing yet again.2004, Jacqueline Guest, Racing Fear, James Lorimer & Company, 5. From the entry Qapla'
- The layman does not realise the dreadful nightmare of running in fog, especially at night, when the safety of everyone depends on the driver hearing the fog signal detonate.1943 November and December, T. Lovatt Williams, “Some Reminiscences of the Footplate—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 344. From the entry fog signal
- What if someone, I don't know, puts a bomb someplace, hops on a plane and detonates it remotely? ¶ Sounds like you've been watching a few too many action movies.2013 November 21, Brian Fung, “Everything you need to know about in-flight cellphone rules”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The…. From the entry I'll bite
Meaning of detonate
- verb To explode, blow up.
- verb To combust or decompose supersonically via shock compression.
- verb To cause to explode.
Questions about detonate in a sentence
- How do you use detonate in a sentence?
- Detonate is used as a verb. For example: “The engineers detonated the dynamite and watched the old building collapse.”
- What is a short sentence with detonate?
- “Then he detonated.”
- What does detonate mean?
- Detonate means to explode, blow up.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: detonate (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.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “How to use detonate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/detonate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
