Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use incentive in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective

Incentive means something that motivates, rouses, or encourages. Example: “I have no incentive to do housework right now.”

Examples of incentive by meaning

nounSomething that motivates, rouses, or encourages.

  • I have no incentive to do housework right now.

nounA bonus or reward, often monetary, to work harder.

  • Management offered the sales team a $500 incentive for each car sold.

More sentences with incentive

  • If the government wants graduates to stay in the country, they should offer more incentives.From the entry graduate
  • One way to encourage your employees to work harder is by giving them incentives.From the entry employee
  • Any efforts to reduce overimaging must find ways of addressing the underlying incentives behind defensive medicine.From the entry overimaging
  • May incl: Regional Pay Zone (based on loc.) & Stock equity incentives.2025 November 1, Wal-Mart, “Senior Software Engineer”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry incl
  • Furthermore, this provision simplifies the investment incentives and creates “rural qualified opportunity funds” (RQOFs).2025 May, “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill”, in United States House Committee on Ways & Means, page 25. From the entry RQOF
  • Authorities are offering incentives to those slow to accept the needle.2021 February 26, “What life is like in countries where Covid-19 vaccination is increasingly a success”, in CNN. From the entry refusenik
  • With London land prices rocketing, there was also a significant financial incentive.2020 May 20, Paul Bigland, “East London Line's renaissance”, in Rail, pages 48–49. From the entry rocket
  • Now, the Fang County government is trying “incentives,” according to a statement posted Saturday on its website.2020 March 12, en, “Deaths in China Surpass Toll From SARS”, in The New York Times (Asia Pacific section), New York, N.Y.: The New York…. From the entry fang
  • Assuming you have ticked all your safety boxes, financial incentives decide priorities.2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 44. From the entry tick all the boxes
  • This serves as an incentive to keep mining the bitcoins and keep the bitcoin transactions working.2013, Elda Watulo, John Davidson, “Making a Hash of It”, in How to Make Money Online With Digital Currency Bitcoins (Entrepreneur Book…. From the entry bitcoin
  • Unless matters take a nastier turn, neither side has much incentive to compromise.2011 February 24, “Wisconsin and wider”, in The Economist. From the entry much
  • Would a nonmonopolistic system be an incentive for a leaner process, and lead to affordable prices?2009 September 27, “Letters: The Rich, the Poor and Health Insurance”, in New York Times. From the entry nonmonopolistic
  • There is a small incentive to bring your own mug, though not quite so good as Irving.2006 August 19, KD, “Tim Hortons”, in hfx.general (Usenet), archived from the original on 17 Apr 2026. From the entry Tims
  • There's no incentive to throw him an even remotely hittable pitch.2004 October 1, “Dunn and Morgan”, in alt.sports.baseball.cinci-reds (Usenet). From the entry hittable
  • I think market forces might help -- competing poker televisors offering incentives to play in their events.2004 February 18, wrap, “to Erik Seidel”, in rec.gambling.poker (Usenet), archived from the original on 30 Jun 2026. From the entry televisor
  • If a rare transaction is mistaxed, taxpayers have an incentive to find it and exploit it.2004, Henry Aaron, Joel Slemrod, The Crisis in Tax Administration, page 36. From the entry mistax
  • Longhai, in Zhangzhou municipality, is offering a profit tax rebate as an incentive to lure foreign investment.1996 September 11, “Longhai tax breaks to attract foreigners”, in South China Morning Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28…. From the entry Longhai
  • Gaj’s incentive for the graphical shape of his letters was a native source.1995, Milan Moguš, A History of the Croatian Language, page 163. From the entry haček
  • A SLERP Commission proposal would improve incentives by applying a special rate on new construction.1986, New Jersey. Economic Policy Council, Report [of The] Economic Policy Council and Office of Economic Policy, page 5. From the entry slerp
  • Military tactics change like everything else, and old men lose their vigor and perception and incentive.1977, Patricia Gallagher, Mystic Rose, New York, N.Y.: Avon, →ISBN, page 125. From the entry doddard
  • The possibility of dollar-for-dollar matching of funds is an incentive to all agencies participating.1957 January 15, “The Governor’s Hint On Mental Health”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 62, number 188, Hackensack, N.J., page 28. From the entry mental-health care
  • "I think politicians all of the sudden have an incentive to be more responsive to these concerns," said Prof.2025 December 29, Jill Mahoney, “Experts call for public beneficial land ownership registry in Ontario. Such registries force disclosure…. From the entry all of the sudden
  • Quite the incentive for Brad Fittler’s Baby Blues.2018 July 11, Dan Liebke, “The Liebke Ratings: State of Origin 3”, in The Roar. From the entry -wash
  • Banks' incentives are to provide more loans, not fewer.2017 February 8, Fuxiu Jiang; Zhan Jiang; Jicheng Huang; Kenneth A. Kim, John R. Nofsinger, “Bank Competition and Leverage Adjustments”…. From the entry overlevered
  • Koch thinks the gigafactory should be hiring more people from the community, whether there are incentives or not.2016, Lydia DePillis, “At Tesla’s gigafactory, a larger battle over worker pay”, in The Washington Post. From the entry Nevadan
  • This advantage is the primary incentive for using a list container, rather than a vector or a deque.2015, Ivor Horton, Using the C++ Standard Template Libraries, Apress, →ISBN, page 64. From the entry container
  • Cybersecurity really is all about people and incentives.2014 July 2, Peter W[arren] Singer, Allan Friedman, “The 5 Biggest Cybersecurity Myths, Debunked”, in Wired, archived from the original on…. From the entry PEBCAK
  • By offering such incentives, the proprietors created a social position, the quitrenter, that did not exist in Northeastern Scotland.2014, Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683-1765, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 111. From the entry quitrenter
  • With MOOCs offered by the most renowned professors in their respective fields, students have less incentive to relocate for postsecondary education.2013 January 16, Anita Singh, Howard Adelman, “How open courses are changing the modern university”, in University Affairs, Canada…. From the entry MOOC
  • The terrified looks on everyone's face when it was time to play that game was enough incentive to come to Thanksmas.2011, Tamara Jane Owens, Remembering Mary Jane, page 78. From the entry Thanksmas
  • Foot voting provides much stronger incentives than ballot box voting for both information acquisition and rational information use.2011, Ilya Somin (January 2011), Foot voting, political ignorance, and constitutional design (PDF), Social Philosophy and Policy…. From the entry foot voting
  • NEPRC gave me excellent comparotives on all Northeast Jobs: Salaries, incentives, sign-ons, loan repay, relocation, bonuses, benefits in minutes.2009, Emergency Medicine - Volume 41, Issues 1-6, page 49. From the entry sign-on
  • Unfortunately, each and every one of us might have a positive incentive to try to free-ride on the efforts of others.2009, Russell Hardin, David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist, →ISBN, page 77. From the entry free-ride
  • For example, in one ad, the female voiceover (representing the government) states: ‘We′re giving doctors more incentives to bulk bill.2007, Sally Ann Young, Government Communication in Australia, page 199. From the entry bulk bill
  • Usually the costs are sufficiently high to provide incentive and the chargeback places these costs into the regular system of accountability.2006, Dan MacLeod, The Ergonomics Kit for General Industry, page 121. From the entry chargeback
  • Larger incentives are paid for direct deals versus nonagented deals.2005, The Secured Lender - Volume 61, page 50. From the entry nonagented
  • Still, Winn is a savvy observer of intellectual politics, ably dissecting the economic and administrative incentives that encourage academics to overspecialize.1999 February 24, Louis Jacobson, “It's the play and the song that count”, in Princeton Alumni Weekly. From the entry overspecialize
  • Incentives to engage in the exchange of votes in legislatures, or logrolling, have existed since the inception of legislatures.1997, Thomas Stratmann, “Logrolling”, in Dennis C[ary] Mueller, editor, Perspectives on Public Choice: A Handbook, Cambridge: Cambridge…. From the entry logrolling

Meaning of incentive

  1. noun Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages.
  2. noun A bonus or reward, often monetary, to work harder.
  3. adjective Inciting; encouraging or moving; rousing to action; stimulating.

Full definition of incentive

Questions about incentive in a sentence

How do you use incentive in a sentence?
Incentive is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “I have no incentive to do housework right now.”
What is a short sentence with incentive?
“Cybersecurity really is all about people and incentives.”
What does incentive mean?
Incentive means something that motivates, rouses, or encourages.

Source and license

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