How to use habitual in a sentence

38 example sentences · adjective, noun

Habitual means of or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring. Example: “Her habitual lying was the reason for my mistrust.”

Examples of habitual by meaning

adjectiveOf or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring.

Her habitual lying was the reason for my mistrust.

adjectiveRegular or usual.

Professor Franklein took his habitual seat at the conference table.

adjectiveOf a person or thing: engaging in some behaviour as a habit or regularly.

He’s a habitual chain-smoker.
Research indicates that in habitual users, caffeine may increase fat breakdown, but this does not necessarily result in an increase in fat use for energy or an increase in catecholamines or performance.2002, Jose Antonio, Jeffrey R. Stout, “Caffeine and Ephedrine”, in Supplements for Endurance Athletes, Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics...

adjectivePertaining to an action performed customarily, ordinarily, or usually.

In English, for instance, the Habitual Aspect (used to construction) can combine freely with Progressive Aspect, to give such forms as used to be playing.1976, Bernard Comrie, “Perfective and Imperfective”, in Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems...

nounA construction representing something done habitually.

As an expression of the iterative habitual suffixal -s is by no means recent.2007, Raymond Hickey, “The Emergence of Irish English”, in Irish English: History and Present-day Forms (Studies in English Language)...
For example, repeated occurrence (iteratives or ‘habituals’) in English may be signalled by repeatedly or several times (‘He shouted repeatedly’), or it may be part of the meaning of the verb (‘The bird fluttered its wings’).2007, Howard Jackson, “Grammar: Morphology and Syntax”, in Key Terms in Linguistics, London; New York, N.Y.: Continuum, →ISBN, page 23

More sentences with habitual

The incorrigibles in the prison population are either lifers or habitual reoffenders.From the entry incorrigible
Even as a child, she was a habitual poser of difficult questions.From the entry poser
A habitual overspender, I came to dread the arrival of my monthly bank statement.From the entry overspender
My cat is a habitual bird killer.From the entry killer
He divides dyspepsias into accidental, temporary (indigestions) and habitual.From the entry dyspepsia
In the beginning, this level of secrecy was never the intention, but it has since become habitual.2020 February 17, Karen Hao, “The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI’s bid to save the world”, in MIT Technology Review. From the entry AGI
Habitual short-sleepers did not experience changes in taste perception, activity, or dietary intake following sleep alteration.2016 September, Shannon L Smith, Mary-Jon Ludy, Robin M Tucker, “Changes in taste preference and steps taken after sleep curtailment”, in…. From the entry short-sleeper
Louis slang for redneck) with an inept, habitual tendency to commit petty crimes.2015, Pate McMichael, Klandestine: How a Klan Lawyer and a Checkbook Journalist ..., page 2. From the entry hoosier
'Never be taken in by false appearancesʻ was Swift's habitual satirical message.2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.9, at p.150, 151. From the entry appearance
And his principle prescription was to incapacitate a larger number of habitual offenders.2001, Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order. From the entry incapacitate
In addition, about 4 million Americans are occasional or habitual sleepwakers.1965, Science Digest, volume 58, page 37. From the entry sleepwaker
She looked very neurotic, moving in a jerky way, her body giving little twitches of habitual umbrage.1960, Muriel Spark, chapter 10, in The Bachelors, London: Macmillan. From the entry umbrage
At any given minute, we must choose between habitual action and thoughtful action, between Dogma and Pragma.1939, Jacques Barzun, Of Human Freedom, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, page 129. From the entry pragma
I was still revolted by their accents and infuriated by their habitual rudeness.1937, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, Penguin, published 1962, Part 2, Chapter 9, p. 131. From the entry infuriate
This consists of habitual direct observation of pathologic process and the suppression of an ultravivid clinical imagination.1929, The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 1929-01: Volume 14, Issue 4, Elsevier Limited, page 302. From the entry ultravivid
Only a philosopher or an habitual defaulter would live in such a state.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards…. From the entry defaulter
Habitual trauma from nose-picking (rhinotillexis) is an additional etiology.2017, Raymond E. Phillips, The Physical Exam, An Innovative Approach in the Age of Imaging, page 131. From the entry rhinotillexis
The only way to handle habitual overfeeders is to identify them, befriend them and urge them to stop.2007 November 25, Andrew D. Blechman, “Pigeon Paranoia”, in New York Times. From the entry overfeeder
This trophic parasitism is thought to have arisen from plesiobiosis, the habitual nesting of two species in very close proximity.1995, R.T. Carde, William J. Bell, Chemical Ecology of Insects 2, →ISBN, page 395. From the entry plesiobiosis
To find Ned Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs.1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, New York: Scribner, Book 2, Chapter 9, p. 444. From the entry astonishment
The most westerly of the Shetlands, it still officially adheres to the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind our habitual Gregorian one.2025 November 12, Vitali Vitaliev, “Time travelling”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 68. From the entry Julian calendar
The spirit becomes an ingrained part of one's life, not subject to gusty moods and feelings, but a habitual part of life.2016, Robert Ellwood, Introducing Religion. From the entry gusty
An alief is, to a reasonable approximation, an innate or habitual propensity to respond to an apparent stimulus in a particular way.2008, TS Gendler, “Alief in action (and reaction)”, in Mind & Language. From the entry alief
Where habitual offenders remain, we can be sure that any sin-bin will not be populated by members of any one racial group alone.2004, Richard Giles, Creating Uncommon Worship: Transforming the Liturgy of the Eucharist, page 88. From the entry sin bin
Suppose you are a habitual car key loser and that you keep track of where your keys turn up after each search.1999, Larry Medsker, Lakhmi C. Jain, Recurrent Neural Networks: Design and Applications, →ISBN, page 192. From the entry loser
No doubt my aesthetic reflections are partly crippled from my being an habitual inmate of libraries and museums, and fettered with the intellectual’s defensive irony.1993 winter, Kingsley Widmer, “Anarchist Aesthetics: A Few Notes Towards a Libertarian View of the Arts”, in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire…. From the entry counteringly
Surely, Ford Nation can’t win there, not with a leader so unfamiliar with facts and rational discourse, not in Canada’s fulcrum province, the place of habitual moderation.2018 June 8, Jeffrey Simpson, “Opinion: How Ontario became Ford Nation”, in The Globe and Mail, retrieved 30 Sep 2022. From the entry Ford Nation
He watches everything, anything, is a habitual channel flicker, and keeps up a steady dialogue with the programming that is really a way of talking to his wife.2011, Andrea Gillies, chapter 13, in Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimeimers. From the entry channel flicker
But a profound melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual place .2008, Reginald Menville, Douglas Menville, Ancient Hauntings, page 119. From the entry chordless
Half an hour with the manager of Faith Brothers had had the effect of studding the sergeant's habitual simplicity of words and phrases with amazing jewels of technicality.1929, Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue. From the entry television
In my understanding, the desire for “the smile on the coffined face,” is the habitual yearning of the person to identify him or herself with an image, with a form.2014, Branka Arsic, American Impersonal: Essays with Sharon Cameron. From the entry coffined

Meaning of habitual

adjective Of or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring.
adjective Regular or usual.
adjective Of a person or thing: engaging in some behaviour as a habit or regularly.

Full definition of habitual

Questions about habitual in a sentence

How do you use habitual in a sentence?: Habitual is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Her habitual lying was the reason for my mistrust.”
What is a short sentence with habitual?: “He’s a habitual chain-smoker.”
What does habitual mean?: Habitual means of or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring.

Adapted from Wiktionary: habitual (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use habitual in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/habitual. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.