Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use engage in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Engage means to engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. Example: “They were engaged last month! They're planning to have the wedding next year.”

Examples of engage by meaning

verbTo draw into conversation.

  • Shapps refused to engage with the unions and claimed that the industrial disputes were nothing to do with him, despite controlling the purse strings.2022 September 21, Christian Wolmar, “Trevelyan must 'give a damn' and engage with the railway”, in RAIL, number 966, page 45

verbTo arrange to employ or use (a worker, a space, etc.).

  • For this scene, a large number of supers are engaged, and in order to further swell the crowd, practically all the available stage hands have to ‘walk on’ dressed in various coloured dominoes, and all wearing masks.1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher...
  • Rich Jews used to engage Christian music-teachers to teach their daughters German vocal and instrumental music.1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 385

verbTo bind through legal or moral obligation (to do something, especially to marry) (usually in passive).

  • They were engaged last month! They're planning to have the wedding next year.

verbTo mesh or interlock (of machinery, especially a clutch).

  • Whenever I engage the clutch, the car stalls out.
  • The Liner train wagon is a simple underframe on bogies, with coned location points that engage recesses in the container bases.1964 April, G. Freeman Allen, “The BRB shows traders the Liner train prototypes”, in Modern Railways, page 265

verbTo come into gear with.

  • The teeth of one cogwheel engage those of another.

verbTo activate a lock.

  • He engaged the lock on the door.
  • The lock engaged automatically when the door was shut.

More sentences with engage

  • Do you think that companies that engage in animal testing are evil?From the entry evil
  • The driver engages the follower intermittently, as dictated by the solenoid.From the entry driver
  • This pedal engages the clutch, and until you do that you can't shift.From the entry engages
  • See, that rod there is supposed to kick up to engage the gear.From the entry kick up
  • Groups of businessmen, housewives, classmates or neighbors may engage in hadaka no tsukiai.From the entry hadaka no tsukiai
  • Users who engage in disruptive behavior may lose their accounts.From the entry lose
  • Engage the lock to prevent backward rotation of the wheel.From the entry backward
  • An open-loop system is unable to correct any errors that it makes, and it cannot engage in machine learning.From the entry open-loop
  • I don't want to engage in housecest too early on.From the entry housecest
  • The fact that pledges willingly submit themselves to hazing is neither here nor there, and any organization that engages in hazing will lose its charter.From the entry neither here nor there
  • That army was ready to engage in memetic warfare at any given moment, and it did.2025 October 29, Alyssa Mercante, “Why Trump’s White House is using video game memes to recruit for ICE”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry memetic warfare
  • But it’s not just the Trumpfluencers who engage in this behavior.2025 April 12, Matt Labash, “America Has Become Trump's Battered Wife”, in Slack Tide, archived from the original on 16 Apr 2025. From the entry Trumpfluencer
  • European alarmism has already encouraged a growing chorus of Russian elites to engage in mirror imaging.2025 December 20, Hanna Notte, “Europe risks a self-fulfilling prophecy over Russia threat”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times…. From the entry mirror imaging
  • It's also the side I'll continue to engage with moving forward.2025 April 6, Kate Ng, “How scandal rocked the internet's knitting community: 'Not a week goes by without drama'”, in The Independent…. From the entry KnitTok
  • “I did not initiate, welcome, encourage, engage in, or learn from much less enjoy, Bailey’s tirade.2024 July 25, Kara Scannell, “Judge who ordered Trump to pay $454 million says he was ‘accosted’ by lawyer and won’t recuse himself from…. From the entry defamatorily
  • The point of Meta's Threads app is to read and engage in public conversations.2024 April 4, Michelle Mark, “Meta's Threads app: The text-based social media platform from Instagram trying to replace X”, in MSN…. From the entry threads
  • Until around the age of 11, children are generally happy to engage with unfamiliar music.2023 February 20, Timothy McKenry, “Why do we stop exploring new music as we get older?”, in The Conversation, archived from the original…. From the entry open-earedness
  • Warcrafters can join guilds and engage in epic battles to overcome various challenges.2022, David Seelow, quoting Gabor, Games as Transformative Experiences for Critical Thinking, Cultural Awareness, and Deep Learning…. From the entry Warcrafter
  • For the first time, schools are going where kids’ brains live to engage them.2022 November 2, J. Brady McCollough, “High schools embrace chance to field esports teams”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.…. From the entry Rocket Leaguer
  • She noted that this method still allowed them to engage in hands-on learning, even at a distance.2021, Margaret L. Niess, Henry Gillow-Wiles, Handbook of Research on Transforming Teachers’ Online Pedagogical Reasoning for Engaging K-12…. From the entry kinetic sand
  • In some cases, the sites engage in a sort of propaganda laundering.2020 September 20, Alan Greenblatt, “Partisan Websites Fill Media Void”, in Voice of America (VOA) [part of the U.S. Agency for Global…. From the entry propaganda laundering
  • Like their Western counterparts, local media engages in shorthand - it reports rather than explains.2019 July 9, Patrick Gathara, “The problem is not 'negative' Western media coverage of Africa”, in Al Jazeera English. From the entry explain
  • Yet our imagined neighbor is insensitive to the need to engage her fellows in this way.2019, Anna Stilz, “Legitimacy and Self-determination”, in Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration, Oxford, Oxfordshire…. From the entry fellow
  • His parents have tried to get him to engage with life offline.2019 November 29, Taylor Lorenz, “Here’s What’s Happening in the American Teenage Bedroom”, in New York Times. From the entry offline
  • Inquiries have typically been met with silence, deflection, or abrupt refusal to engage.2019 November 24, Michael Lee, “Jimmy Butler boos, Josh Richardson buckets and a reunion for both players that answered a few lingering…. From the entry dot-connection
  • The results showed that Hungarian students mainly engage in metacognitive strategies in both years.2018, Habók Anita, Andrea Magyar, “The Effect of Language Learning Strategies on Proficiency, Attitudes and School Achievement”, in…. From the entry metacognitive
  • For many years, ‘berestology’ has been an interdisciplinary research venture that engages archaeologists, philologists, linguists, and historians.2018, Jos Schaeken, “Preface”, in Voices on Birchbark: Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Studies in Slavic and General…. From the entry berestology
  • They engage in self-branding techniques that present traditional, white, male-dominated values as desirable and aspirational.2018 September 18, Rebecca Lewis, “Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube”, in Data & Society, archived from…. From the entry self-branding
  • Exhale and engage the navel, turn the spine to the right.2017, Sian O'Neill, Yoga Teaching Handbook, page 51. From the entry unspin
  • Many individuals engage in behaviors that occur just before full-blown aggression or violence.2016, Patrick W. Corrigan, Principles and Practice of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, page 260. From the entry preaggressive
  • This chapter extends traditional functionalist approaches to design to engage cultural, experience-based, and techno-futurist approaches.2015, Woodrow Barfield, Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality, page 32. From the entry techno-futurist

Meaning of engage

  1. verb To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied.
  2. verb To draw into conversation.
  3. verb To attract, to please; (archaic) to fascinate or win over (someone).

Full definition of engage

Questions about engage in a sentence

How do you use engage in a sentence?
Engage is used as a verb. For example: “They were engaged last month! They're planning to have the wedding next year.”
What is a short sentence with engage?
“He engaged the lock on the door.”
What does engage mean?
Engage means to engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied.

Source and license

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