Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use distinguish in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Distinguish means to recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics. Example: “The soldier distinguished himself in combat and received a medal.”

Examples of distinguish by meaning

verbTo recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics.

  • It had begun to take a leading place even in the days of the Ptolemies, and in scientific, as distinguished from purely literary work, it had assumed a position of primary importance early in the Christian era.1922, De Lacy O'Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History
  • The physics of elementary particles in the 20th century was distinguished by the observation of particles whose existence had been predicted by theorists sometimes decades earlier.2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 146

verbTo make noticeably different or better from others through accomplishments.

  • The soldier distinguished himself in combat and received a medal.

verbTo confer an honor upon.

  • The soldier was distinguished with a medal for his bravery.

More sentences with distinguish

  • When will we learn to distinguish between the fair and the foul?From the entry fair
  • John is difficult to distinguish sometimes because he carries himself so self-effacingly.From the entry self-effacingly
  • Pragmatically, speakers can vary intraverbal stress to distinguish homoiophones more clearly.From the entry intraverbal
  • His achloropsia meant he could not distinguish light and dark shades of green.From the entry achloropsia
  • Many languages do not distinguish countable nouns from uncountable nouns.From the entry uncountable
  • Some colour-blind people can't distinguish between red and green.From the entry between
  • Field work traditionally distinguishes true archaeologists from armchair archaeologists.From the entry field
  • Green traffic lights look white to me, which makes them hard to distinguish from streetlights from far away.From the entry makes
  • A flash of lightning may be made up of several strokes. If they are separated by enough time for the eye to distinguish them, the lightning will appear to flicker.From the entry stroke
  • The distinguishing flavour of sundubu jjigae comes from sauteing gochugaru (Korean red chilli powder) in sesame oil.2024 September 25, Jane Lee, “‘Jjigae is comfort food of the highest order’: my obsession with cooking Korea’s best-loved soups”, in The…. From the entry saute
  • To combat perceived misrepresentation, incels attempt to distinguish themselves both from violent misogynists and from right-wing extremists.2023 January, Meg Roser, Charlotte Chalker and Tim Squirrell, “Spitting out the blackpill: Evaluating how incels present themselves in…. From the entry misogynist
  • Distinguishing true from pseudopathology by eye becomes largely an intuitive (Type 1 in DPM terms) process.2023, Simon Mays, “The Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Paleopathology” (chapter 2), in The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology…. From the entry pseudopathology
  • Third – and here’s the clincher – you gotta distinguish between valid rules and nonrules.2023, Stephen Wilbers, Persuasive Communication for Science and Technology Leaders: Writing and Speaking with Confidence, John Wiley &…. From the entry nonrule
  • Bankman-Fried had long flaunted his E.A. bona fides to distinguish himself from other crypto billionaires.2022 December 9, Jennifer Szalai, “Effective Altruism Warned of Risks. Did It Also Incentivize Them?”, in The New York Times, archived…. From the entry ea
  • Popper introduced the so-called ‘demarcation problem’ of identifying what distinguishes pseudoscience from science.2019, Kevin McCain, Kostas Kampourakis, editors, What is Scientific Knowledge?, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry unfalsifiable
  • Okay, so, the first items we made Victoria try to distinguish were bracelets!2019 December 4, Megan Uy, “We Made 'You' Star Victoria Pedretti Doubt Her Luxury Taste in 'Expensive Taste Test'”, in Cosmopolitan, New…. From the entry presh
  • She'd been an Army noncombatant, but roadside IEDs didn't distinguish between armed troops and support services.2017, Dean Koontz, The Silent Corner, page 61. From the entry IED
  • The term TERF exists to distinguish RFs who are TE from those who aren't TE.2016 February 23, Eve Keneinan (@EveKeneinan), Twitter. From the entry TIRF
  • Apart from that, their etiologies, pathogenesis, and clinical implications differ, making it important to distinguish between them.2016 August, Adriana Lama, Lucía Ferreiro, María E. Toubes, Antonio Golpe, Francisco Gude, José M. Álvarez-Dobaño, Francisco J.…. From the entry pseudochylothorax
  • It found that people could not distinguish the source of the comments.2015 May 20, Laura Pintur, “My campaign against Zoo Magazine: the well-being of girls should come before profits” (0:25 from the start)…. From the entry indecipherable
  • This allows for any sequencing strategy to simply distinguish between osmylated and unosmylated bases.2015 December 12, “Osmium-Based Pyrimidine Contrast Tags for Enhanced Nanopore-Based DNA Base Discrimination”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry unosmylated
  • In that essay, Said distinguishes between exile, refugee, expatriate and émigré.2014 February 20, James Wood, On Not Going Home London Review of Books. From the entry émigré
  • The classical curriculum distinguishes between trivium and quadrium to classify knowledge fields in education.2014, Andreas Nordin, Transnational Policy Flows in European Education. From the entry quadrium
  • It is the principle of nonresistance that distinguishes aikidō from other forms of budō.2013, Wolfgang Dietrich, translated by Wolfgang Sützl and Victoria Hindley, “Budō-aikidō”, in Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the…. From the entry budō
  • A distinguishing feature of canine coronaviral enteritis is that bone marrow cells are not affected.2012, Linda Merrill, Small Animal Internal Medicine for Veterinary Technicians and Nurses. From the entry coronaviral
  • For each parameter value of a we distinguish four different gametypes.2012, Bettina Kuon, Two-Person Bargaining Experiments with Incomplete Information, page 65. From the entry gametype
  • The thick density of the smoke made it nigh impossible to distinguish anyone.2011, Ken Bruen, Headstone, Mysterious Press, →ISBN, page 189. From the entry wisp
  • Michael Eric Dyson distinguishes two classes of Black Americans today: the Afristocracy versus the Ghettocracy.2010 August 21, Daniel White Hodge, The Soul of Hip Hop: Rims, Timbs and a Cultural Theology, InterVarsity Press, →ISBN, page 58. From the entry Afristocracy
  • For archaeologists, distinguishing art from nonart is still quite a challenge.2009 February 6, Michael Balter, “ORIGINS: On the Origin of Art and Symbolism”, in Science, volume 323, number 5915, →DOI, pages 709–711. From the entry nonart
  • Stobie poles have been a distinguishing feature of the South Australian landscape for many decades.2008, Graeme Dandy, David Walker, Trevor Daniell, Robert Warner, Planning and Design of Engineering Systems, Second Edition, page 68. From the entry stobie pole
  • The Bush Administration attempted to distinguish the current case from Flast. . . .2007 June 29, Cass R. Sunstein, “The Supreme Court's conservative divide”, in The New Republic Online. From the entry distinction without a difference
  • Dialectologists distinguish Gallo-Italic varieties (Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol) from Venetan (Venetian, Trentino).2007, Mark F. Gilbert, Robert K. Nilsson, Historical Dictionary of Modern Italy, 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1999), p. 144. From the entry Gallo-Italic
  • Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia distinguishes life from being in his theory of African vitology.2007, Satya Nilayam: Chennai Journal of Intercultural Philosophy, page 12. From the entry vitology
  • What distinguishes these projects from faith-based initiatives of the Employment and Training Administration?2006, Senate Hearings Before the Committee on Appropriations. From the entry faith-based
  • Do be careful to distinguish progressive-tense verbs from gerunds used as subjective complements.2005, Gary Lutz, Diane Stevenson, The Writer's Digest Grammar Desk Reference, page 55. From the entry gerund
  • It is worth pausing to distinguish Hindu inclusivity from Christian inclusivity.2003, Ian S. Markham, A Theology of Engagement, page 133. From the entry inclusivity

Meaning of distinguish

  1. verb To recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics.
  2. verb To see someone or something clearly or distinctly.
  3. verb To make noticeably different or better from others through accomplishments.

Full definition of distinguish

Questions about distinguish in a sentence

How do you use distinguish in a sentence?
Distinguish is used as a verb. For example: “The soldier distinguished himself in combat and received a medal.”
What is a short sentence with distinguish?
“Field work traditionally distinguishes true archaeologists from armchair archaeologists.”
What does distinguish mean?
Distinguish means to recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics.

Source and license

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