Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use improvise in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Improvise means to make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork rather than by a careful plan. Example: “He had no speech prepared, so he improvised.”

Examples of improvise by meaning

verbTo make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork...

  • He had no speech prepared, so he improvised.
  • They improvised a simple shelter with branches and the rope they were carrying.
  • She improvised a lovely solo.

More sentences with improvise

  • He has a nimble mind and can improvise in any situation.From the entry nimble
  • He rhymed up the kid's name with funny words to make an improvised song.From the entry rhyme up
  • Improvising isn't working, let's script this out.From the entry script out
  • I improvised for three or four minutes, speaking complete twaddle in character.2025 October 28, Arifa Akbar, quoting Meera Syal, “‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the…. From the entry twaddle
  • You can crab block him but improvise and overcome this big mamma jamma!2022, Steven H. Smith, Shout at the Day 2: The Next Year. From the entry mamma jamma
  • Due to the improvised explosive device (IED) and sniper threat, these vehicles' weapons stations are heavily armored.2011, Gordon Rottman, Browning .50-caliber Machine Guns, page 69. From the entry stryker
  • Each of the four of them knew enough to improvise the calling of the quarters and spirits.2010 August 19, Chris Maunder, Calling, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 154. From the entry witches' besom
  • Then the technology changed, and I improvised an inelegant three-finger style for computer keyboards.2009 April 5, Virginia Heffernan, “I Hate My iPhone”, in New York Times. From the entry secretarially
  • Sardanas begin with an improvised fluviol solo introduction of ten measures.2008, Robert Francis Waters, Déodat de Séverac: Musical Identity in Fin de Siècle France, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., →ISBN, page 177. From the entry fluviol
  • I thought scat was a form of song, that improvised skibidy bop soo bob stuff.1996 November 22, Jennifer D. Cohoon, “Funniest store names???”, in rec.humor (Usenet). From the entry skibidy
  • Jack Kerouac, standing up there and improvising poems to jazz, was a lousy poet.1991, Agni, page 156. From the entry lamester
  • Boshy, elated, improvised a series of unbirdlike notes, startlingly loud, and new to all feathered folk.1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia…. From the entry unbirdlike
  • It makes The Grand Budapest Hotel look as if it was improvised over a weekend and shot with a smartphone.2021 July 12, Nicholas Barber, “The French Dispatch: Four stars for Wes Anderson's latest”, in BBC. From the entry labour-intensive
  • Next he records his voice, improvising funny lyrics.2018, David Sheff, Beautiful Boy. From the entry pluckage
  • If you're black you've had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she'd probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.2012, Nadine Gordimer, No Time Like the Present, Bloomsbury, published 2013, page 46. From the entry acquire
  • He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16. From the entry fey
  • There was some wild free improvising in the middle, building up to a meticulous and completely nonwild solo by Mr.2009 June 25, Ben Ratliff, “Mixing the Prepared With the Impromptu”, in New York Times. From the entry nonwild
  • In fact, newspaper accounts chronicle the rise of gyaru-moji (“girl-signs”), a “secret” texting language of symbols improvised by Japanese teenage girls.2009, Aaron Marcus, “Advanced Interaction Modalities with Mobile Digital Content”, in Aaron Marcus, Anxo Cereijo Roibás, Riccardo Sala…. From the entry gyaru-moji
  • Collectivism is a major point of the piece, but there’s ample space for individual statements, both notated and improvised.2007 May 26, Nate Chinen, “Say Amen, Everybody, 15 Years Down the Line”, in New York Times. From the entry muezzinlike
  • In one of the previews I dried (lost my lines) in my opening scene, 1.4, and had to improvise.2006, Michael Dobson, Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today, page 126. From the entry dry
  • I then suggested that he should play a tune on the khène while I improvised an accompaniment on the ukelele.2001, Mervyn Brown, War in Shangri-La, Radcliffe, published 2001, page 155. From the entry khene
  • Like many other people, I have often used the verb to improvise as a simple term for notationless and scriptless composition.1997, Nancy Vine Durling, Jean Renart and the art of romance: essays on Guillaume de Dole. From the entry notationless
  • Ability to ornament, octavate, play chords and do some improvising.1984, VdGSA News, XXI-XXIV, page 39. From the entry octavate
  • He provided for a hot mess and he got the men up off the floor with improvised bunks.1974, Langdon Sully, No Tears for the General: The Life of Alfred Sully, 1821-1879, page 119. From the entry hot mess
  • Already gaining momentum as a national dance craze is the "Sluefoot" dance improvised by Astaire to a song of Mercer's.1957 July 3, The Kojonup Courier, WA, page 4, column 6. From the entry slue-foot
  • The New York Times notes that, where his rallies were once "improvised and volatile," their finales now feel more planned, solemn, and infused with religion.2024 April 8, “The Rapid Secularization of America”, in Fareed Zakaria GPS, spoken by Fareed Zakaria. From the entry altar call
  • Ukraine has used improvised unmanned systems – primarily its so-called 'Alibaba drones' — to attack beyond its current territorial bounds and even into Russia proper.2022 October 29, Howard Altman, Stetson Payne, Tyler Rogoway, “Ukraine Unleashes Mass Kamikaze Drone Boat Attack On Russia's Black Sea…. From the entry kamikaze drone
  • For those unlucky enough to be on a service without lavatory provision, we can only speculate as to how passengers improvised if caught short.2020 January 2, Dr Mike Esbester, “Waste disposal...”, in Rail, page 36. From the entry unlucky
  • This was music more exclusively rooted in black traditions, played by men who often could not read music but who instead improvised.1999, Reid MITCHELL, ALL ON A MARDI GRAS DAY, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 153. From the entry routiner
  • For the final segment, the audience shouted out words used in an improvised group poem: “clementine” for the Old Heads and “glizzie” for the Young Bulls.[2025 November 25, Aigerim Bibol, “The First Page Attends “The Late(ish) Poetry Show” in Philadelphia”, in The Bi-College News, Haverford…. From the entry glizzie
  • This improvised way of coming together helped employees shoot the breeze from a safe distance and enjoy a bit of that water-cooler effect everyone was starting to miss.2022 August 21, “The future is coming together at MGKF”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 194th year, number 82, page 37, column 1. From the entry water-cooler effect
  • In the face of this print music culture, 'faking' was the ability—at once respected and disrespected—to improvise a song (or a part in an arrangement) without reading the notation.Denning, cited in 2020, Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (page 110). From the entry fake
  • The 42nd revue at The Second City's "junior" stage waxes sardonic about Trump, improvises a song, cleverly incorporates an audience member and trumpets (perhaps unnecessarily) its multiethnic, multiamorous cast.2018 May 9, “Critics' Picks”, in Windy City Times. From the entry multiamorous
  • Jazz musicians do that as they play the changes, improvising their way through a sequence of chords that gives stability, shape, and direction to the tune they play.2015, Gregory Clark, Civic Jazz, The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 142. From the entry changes
  • Instead of racing one another to see who could down oysters the fastest, they improvised, and started simply opening their gullets and pouring in the processed swinemeat.2014, Andi Thomas, Alexander Netherton, “International Break 1”, in This Does Not Slip: A Diary of the 2013/14 Premier League…. From the entry swinemeat
  • Beginnings are very different from sustainings; the irregular, often violent, and improvised actions of the founder hero must be succeeded by the regular election of leaders according to law.2012, Alan Ryan, On Politics. From the entry sustaining
  • Amir ElSaffar, an Iraqi-American trumpeter, collaborates here with Hafez Modirzadeh, an Iranian-American saxophonist, playing an improvised music that incorporates traditional elements of Iraqi maqam and Persian dastgah.2009 June 19, The New York Times, “Jazz Listings”, in New York Times. From the entry dastgah

Meaning of improvise

  1. verb To make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork rather than by a careful plan.

Full definition of improvise

Questions about improvise in a sentence

How do you use improvise in a sentence?
Improvise is used as a verb. For example: “He had no speech prepared, so he improvised.”
What is a short sentence with improvise?
“She improvised a lovely solo.”
What does improvise mean?
Improvise means to make something up or invent it as one goes on; to proceed guided only by imagination, intuition, and guesswork rather than by a careful plan.

Source and license

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