Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use fatal in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Fatal means proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny. Example: “Some saints are believed to have forgiven their martyrizers during fatal torture.”

Examples of fatal by meaning

adjectiveProceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.

  • She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court

adjectiveCausing death or destruction.

  • a fatal wound; a fatal disease; that fatal day; a fatal mistake
  • Author Rita Mae Brown consistently strings together short comical movie clips which may be fine for screenplays but fatal in novels.1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author--All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume...
  • This is not a fatal wound.2013 April 4, Hannibal, season 1, episode 1, spoken by Will Graham (Hugh Dancy)

adjectiveCausing a sudden end to the running of a program.

  • a fatal error; a fatal exception

nounA fatality; an event that leads to death.

  • another fatal on the turnpike during rush hour
  • For this same period there have been four fatals and 44 nonfatals in gassy mines.1969, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Education, Hearings, page 90

More sentences with fatal

  • Some saints are believed to have forgiven their martyrizers during fatal torture.From the entry martyrizer
  • On a high ledge, a misstep could be fatal.From the entry misstep
  • Sleep deprivation can lead to fatal vehicular accidents.From the entry sleep deprivation
  • If you don't use your flight instruments when flying in cloud, you can easily get the leans and enter a fatal graveyard spiral.From the entry leans
  • Some students, due to anxiety, skip the most important first step, which is to prewrite the thesis, and jump into the middle of the project, which is a fatal error.From the entry prewrite
  • On Friday, President Donald Trump announced a third fatal U.S. strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boat.2025 September 24, Daniel DePetris, “Trump’s War on ‘Narcoterrorists’ Is Doomed to Fail”, in TIME, archived from the original on 24 Sep 2025. From the entry narcoterrorist
  • Mohamed was the third member of his family to suffer a fatal snakebite within 12 months.2022 November 7, Sam Bradpiece, “At Guinea's only specialized snakebite clinic, doctors need luck and antivenom”, in NPR. From the entry snakebite
  • Though often unpleasant for the patient, an atrial tachycardia is typically not fatal.2013, “Therapies and Treatments”, in Q. Ashton Acton, editor, Tachycardia: New Insights for the Healthcare Professional, Atlanta, Ga.…. From the entry tachycardia
  • The first half of Season 4 was nearly fatal to my Philedom.2000 January 29, Cassandra, “Re: Fathers and Daughters, Signs & Wonders”, in alt.tv.x-files.analysis (Usenet). From the entry Philedom
  • Jamison pointed his pistol at the Nose hoping to land a fatal bullet.1998 October 30, CW, “A Halloween Story...”, in alt.music.rush (Usenet). From the entry boogerball
  • There are a number of diseases that are considered to be universally fatal.1997, Norris McWhirter (editor), The Guinness Book of World Records 1997, page 29. From the entry well-known
  • The repression at Tiananmen Square dealt a serious but not fatal blow to the pro-democracy movement.1992, Richard Nixon, “The Pacific Triangle”, in Seize the Moment, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 179. From the entry dormant
  • The disease of the self runs through my blood; It's a cancer fatal to my soul.1991, Charlie Peacock, “In the Light”. From the entry cancer
  • Fatal Attraction is a glossy slash movie about how men have to protect themselves from powerful women.1988 February 7, Michael Bronski, “"Medea," My Dear”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 29, page 11. From the entry slash movie
  • Sometimes you may miswater a plant, but one mistake is never fatal.1985, David L. Hamilton, Maintenance Techniques for Interior Plants, page 1. From the entry miswater
  • Taoist elixirists were blamed and executed, and the art suffered a fatal blow.1975, Gary Shelton Williams, “A Study of the Oral Nature of the Han Yueh-fu”, in 古代中国, Society for the Study of Early China, page 26…. From the entry elixirist
  • Beauty is a fatal gift for those who want to live virtuously.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 47. From the entry virtuously
  • Reading notes spellingwise is fatal to expressing feeling through song or instrument.1946, B. Marian Brooks, Harry Alvin Brown, Music Education in the Elementary School, page 55. From the entry transverbalize
  • His mistakes are fatal; those of the Law are only temporary and retrievable.1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados. From the entry retrievable
  • No dynamite nor "dulling." The deadly "dull," or wire noose, is a fatal weapon against a trout.1903, Field and Stream, page 66. From the entry dull
  • She can't find out why green sorghum should be so quickly fatal to cattle, says an exchange.1900, Queensland Agricultural Journal, volume 7, page 216. From the entry up the stump
  • There are shootings, stabbings, car wrecks, falls and other accidents that can create a fatal bleed out situation.2023 December 3, David Martin Davies, “Stopping the bleed out to save lives”, in Texas Public Radio, archived from the original on 21 Feb…. From the entry bleed out
  • Corruption becomes fatal when those in power are no longer able to distinguish the difference between self-interest and the national interest.2022 July 27, Charles Hugh Smith, There Won't Be Any Winners Because The Status Quo Is Corrupt Everywhere. From the entry self-interest
  • It sometimes secreted neurotoxins that could be fatal.2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 31. From the entry neurotoxin
  • Hence it is no problem to learn by making hundreds of thousands of largely random, and frequently fatal, mistakes.2020, Brian Christian, “Conclusion”, in The Alignment Problem, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, →ISBN. From the entry ergodicity
  • For a politician who cherishes the connect, social distancing could be politically fatal; but for Biden, it could be a gift.2020 August 15, Jeniffer Senior, “Learning to Love Joe Biden”, in The New York Times. From the entry stick one's foot in it
  • He calls it the “fatal blow” method.2018 April 18, “Chinese driving school makes students put phones on line”, in AP News, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2018. From the entry unorthodox
  • Instead, in these ads children blame their parents for their failure to protect them from a potentially fatal illness.2018 January 2, Samantha D. Gottlieb, “9. The “Tragically Underused” Vaccine”, in Not Quite a Cancer Vaccine. Selling HPV and Cervical…. From the entry scare tactic
  • The dolphin’s bottlenose struck the boy causing fatal internal injuries.2014 June 9, “Utah Toddler Killed By Dolphin In San Francisco”, in The Count. From the entry bottlenose
  • That's when they asked the fatal question.2012, The Shy-Tiger, Dressed Up Garbage Can, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 32. From the entry blazed
  • Normally he could whip all and sundry, but in his be-drunken state he had already survived several almost fatal bad beatings.2010, Andy Duroe, In Desperate Search of the Lesser Spotted Pink Salamander from Ghangi Blah. From the entry bedrunken
  • Malaria can be fatal in the long run, I know.2007, Enrique de Hériz, Lies, page 7. From the entry so is life
  • So for a local newspaper, a splash on a fatal crash is just the first of a series of reports.2006, Bob Franklin, Local Journalism and Local Media: Making the Local News. From the entry splash

Meaning of fatal

  1. adjective Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.
  2. adjective Foreboding death or great disaster.
  3. adjective Causing death or destruction.

Full definition of fatal

Questions about fatal in a sentence

How do you use fatal in a sentence?
Fatal is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Some saints are believed to have forgiven their martyrizers during fatal torture.”
What is a short sentence with fatal?
“This is not a fatal wound.”
What does fatal mean?
Fatal means proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.

Source and license

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