Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use devise in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Devise means to use one’s intellect to plan or design (something). Example: “They had quite a racket devised to relieve customers of their money.”

Examples of devise by meaning

verbTo use one’s intellect to plan or design (something).

  • to devise an argument; to devise a machine, or a new system of writing
  • Thailand goes to the polls on Sunday under a new system that critics say the military government has devised to prevent the most popular political party, which has won every election since 2001, from returning to power.2019 March 21, Setboonsarg, Chayut; Johnson, Kay, “Numbers game: How Thailand's election system favors pro-army parties”, in Robert Birsel...

More sentences with devise

  • They had quite a racket devised to relieve customers of their money.From the entry racket
  • Not knowing of established definitions would be grounds for selecting or devising a working definition.From the entry working definition
  • Traditional retailers are devising strategies to counteract the threat from showrooming.From the entry showrooming
  • The general devised an intelligent strategy for the southern campaign.From the entry intelligent
  • The tongue-lolling bit was devised to overcome these habits.From the entry tongue-lolling bit
  • Madariaga was also the Etarra who devised the Action-Reaction Spiral (Formulation and Internal Initiator).2024, Mauro Lubrano, “Choosing what (not) to do next: a preliminary theoretical framework on strategic innovation in terrorist…. From the entry Etarra
  • This throws the onus on freight operators' train planners to devise ingenious solutions to finding new paths.2023 September 6, Anthony Lambert, “Train paths: more space for freight?”, in RAIL, number 991, page 34. From the entry onus
  • He found ways to devise, stage, and film stunts that are like nothing anyone’s ever accomplished.2017 December 1, Tom Breihan, “Mad Max: Fury Road might already be the best action movie ever made”, in The Onion AV Club. From the entry stunt
  • Fortunately, Frank had devised a cool way of getting down the seemingly endless staircase.2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN. From the entry laundry basket
  • Euclid devised a simple, beautiful proof showing that there is an infinite number of primes.2015 July 24, Gareth Cook, “The Singular Mind of Terry Tao”, in The New York Times Magazine, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company…. From the entry twin prime
  • He began writing down his logic, in a language of his own devising that he calls Terryology.[2015 September 14, Erik Hedegaard, “Terrence Howard's Dangerous Mind”, in Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2016. From the entry Terryology
  • And I looked forward to the other nine games of the greatest team sport devised by man.2014, W. Thomas McDaniel Jr., The Farther Side of Paradise, page 233. From the entry team sport
  • To address these two questions, we devised a computational approach that defines so-called ignoromes.2014 February, Robert W. Williams, “Functionally enigmatic genes: a case study of the brain ignorome”, in PLoS One, volume 9, number 2…. From the entry ignorome
  • Then Captain Charles Renard devised a system that reduced the number to 17.2010, Göran Grimvall, “Chapter 1: Numbers”, in Quantify! A Crash Course in Smart Thinking, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN. From the entry denomination
  • Pendragon, a leading mathematician, devised a mathematical formula that could be used to draw nonrepeating patterns.2009, Stephen M. McJohn, Intellectual Property: Examples & Explanations, page 1. From the entry nonrepeating
  • To standardize his rapid-freeze process, Birdseye devised an iron container with steel plates.2004, Nancy Rubin, American Empress, page 140. From the entry froster
  • The yahrzeit is here, and the least lachrymose country on earth is devising its rituals of commemoration.2002 September 2, Leon Wieseltier, “A Year Later”, in Peter Beinart, editor, The New Republic, New York, N.Y.: The Republic Publishing…. From the entry yahrzeit
  • Hitler later devised a fanciful plan to recoronate the duke King of England.2001, Richard Layman, Julie M. Rivett, editors, Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett 1921–1960, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, →ISBN…. From the entry recoronate
  • Scientists are just now devising a genetic test to distinguish one rootstock from another.1993 October 17, Arthur Lubow, “What's Killing the Grapevines of Napa?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry ampelography
  • He also coined the word "sentics" to describe a new science entirely of his own devising.1991, Timothy K. Smith, "Manfred Clynes Sees A Pattern in Love -- He's Got the Printouts", The Wall Street Journal, September 24, front page. From the entry cyborg
  • Everything from devising a business plan to business expansion strategies are think-tanked.1990, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Crisis, page 20. From the entry think-tank
  • But the definition is anachronistic and misglosses the citation it was presumably devised to explain.1981, Catherine Slater, Defeatists and Their Enemies, page 139. From the entry misgloss
  • Washington devised an eminently commonsensical plan for attacking British outposts at Germantown.1973, Samuel Redsecker II Slaymaker, Captives' Mansion: An American Family Chronicle Covering Nine Generations and Two Hundred Years in a…. From the entry commonsensical
  • Use-the-user premium plans can be devised to fit a great many different types of businesses.1962, George Meredith, Effective Merchandising with Premiums, page 140. From the entry use the user
  • Using an instrument specially devised by Rosenthal, the Iipiodol may be injected intercrico-thyroidally with even better results.1925, The American Journal of Roentgenology and Radium Therapy, page 268. From the entry thyroidally
  • You will see, he will have devised a hiding-place much more intelligent than a safe.1923 October 6, Agatha Christie, “The Case of the Veiled Lady”, in The Sketch, number 1601. From the entry fiddlesticks
  • For the detection of variation of growth it was necessary to devise the extremely sensitive balanced crescograph.1920 February, Scientific American Monthly, page 120. From the entry crescograph
  • There was also the possibility that he might try to lure her into a killbox of his own devising.2023 October 10, HarryBlank, “The Cruelest Fight”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 31 Aug 2024. From the entry kill box
  • DjVu is a relatively old and no longer developed file format devised by AT&T, used to store scanned images.2022 April 26, Juha Saarinen, "Google's VirusTotal Service Vulnerable for Over Eight Months", iTnews. From the entry djvu
  • That apparent self-defeating contradiction is not a Sisyphean exercise in futility devised as a cruel philosophical joke by nihilistic engineers.2020 September 7, Adam Ragusea, 0:14 from the start, in How refrigerators work, and how we all ended up with one, Macon, archived from the…. From the entry sisyphean
  • George Hirsch, chairman of the board of Road Runners, said officials huddled all day Friday, hoping to devise an alternate race.2012 November 2, Ken Belson, New York Times, retrieved 02 Nov 2012. From the entry huddle
  • Many dozenalists have devised their own set of numerals, or they adopt the symbols prevalent in their dozenal society.2010 (written 11↋6), The Duodecimal Bulletin, volume 58 (written 4χ), number 2, archived from the original on 24 Jun 2025, page 9. From the entry dozenal
  • Davies has devised a mosaiclike film language.2009 January 11, Dennis Lim, “Remembrance of Liverpool Past”, in New York Times. From the entry mosaiclike
  • In San Francisco, capital of Silicon Valley and boom town of the internet, innovators have devised the latest in computerised technodazzle.2009 January 23, Simon Jenkins, “Old is new. Even Gutenberg's ghost has returned to live in Silicon Valley”, in The Guardian. From the entry technodazzle
  • In order to distinguish true synesthesia from pseudosynesthesia, for example, they have devised tests that only a genuine synesthete can "pass."2007, Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. From the entry pseudosynesthesia
  • By devising creative ways to freefeed the otters, the animal care staff played a key role in enriching the animals' lives.2001, Soundings: Newsletter of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association, Volumes 26-27. From the entry freefeed
  • I swap a Carlton for a match, and devise a telephone strategy brilliant enough to reduce hardened Tokyo PAs to putty.2001, David Mitchell, number9dream, London: Hodder and Stoughton, →ISBN. From the entry bioborg
  • Diagnostic monitoring of the pulse became linked to study of blood pressure, for which the sphygmomanometer was devised.1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 332. From the entry sphygmomanometer

Meaning of devise

  1. verb To use one’s intellect to plan or design (something).
  2. verb To leave (property) in a will.
  3. verb To form a scheme; to lay a plan; to contrive; to consider.

Full definition of devise

Questions about devise in a sentence

How do you use devise in a sentence?
Devise is used as a verb and noun. For example: “They had quite a racket devised to relieve customers of their money.”
What is a short sentence with devise?
“Davies has devised a mosaiclike film language.”
What does devise mean?
Devise means to use one’s intellect to plan or design (something).

Source and license

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