How to use indeterminate in a sentence

18 example sentences · adjective, noun

Indeterminate means not accurately determined or determinable. Example: “Four miles to the east of Warmington, the River Cherwell flows into Cropredy under a bridge that in 1644 was the scene of another Civil War battle - with an equally indeterminate result.”

Examples of indeterminate by meaning

adjectiveNot accurately determined or determinable.

Four miles to the east of Warmington, the River Cherwell flows into Cropredy under a bridge that in 1644 was the scene of another Civil War battle - with an equally indeterminate result.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 396

adjectiveDesigned to allow the incorporation of future changes whose nature is not yet known.

It bears an affinity to the problem of indeterminate architecture—the indeterminate residential area.2014, David Oakley, The Phenomenon of Architecture in Cultures in Change, page 196

More sentences with indeterminate

As form withers we are left with a directionless, transitory, indeterminate, promiscuous, and repressive space.2014, Adrian Parr, The Greening of Junkspace: A BIT of Hijacking Sustainability, →ISBN. From the entry junkspace
Golded up your hair, even, for all your record said indeterminate.2011, D G Compton, A Usual Lunacy. From the entry gold
But, as such, it can only be an entirely indeterminate characteristic.2007, Christopher E. Macann, Being and Becoming: Natural Philosophy, page 140. From the entry aroundness
To resolve a limit involving an indeterminate form, we sometimes need to apply l’Hôpital’s Rule more than once.2017, Soo T. Tan, “Appendix B”, in Applied Calculus for the Managerial, Life, and Social Sciences, 10th edition, Cengage Learning, section…. From the entry L'Hôpital's Rule
There should be substituted the indeterminate sentence with two types of institutions—one for the first offenders and one for the recidives.1931 November 10, Louis Berman, quotee, “Survey Lays Crime to Gland Disorders: Dr. Berman Presents Evidence Obtained in 3-Year Study of…. From the entry recidive
What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its indeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances.1909, Jack London, Revolution and Other Essays: The Shrinkage of the Planet. From the entry illimitable
In finitism, a statement can be indeterminate at a certain point in time if the value of a number has not yet been determined.2025 August 4, Manon Bischoff, “Some Mathematicians Don’t Believe in Infinity”, in Scientific American, archived from the original on 05…. From the entry finitism
Finally, the Volgorod locality, Maastrichtian in age, has yielded two dinosaurs (an indeterminate hesperornithid and a basal theropod) and a few turtles.2011, David B. Weishampel, Coralia-Maria Jianu, Transylvanian Dinosaurs, Johns Hopkins University Press, page 109. From the entry hesperornithid
This fence, this gap, this indeterminate betweenhood, is the discursive condition of semiotics, as the semiotic is the condition of all conversation.2004, Anne Freadman, The machinery of talk: Charles Peirce and the sign hypothesis. From the entry betweenhood
Five species of cornuate osteostracans have been discovered at Devils Hole, and a further three or four species are probably represented by indeterminate fragmentary material.1999, David L. Dineley, Fossil fishes of Great Britain, page 121. From the entry cornuate
Thigmomorphogenesis can be expressed in plant organs either exhibiting or lacking secondary growth, as well as in organs that have indeterminate or determinate growth.1992, Karl J. Niklas, Plant Biomechanics: An Engineering Approach to Plant Form and Function, University of Chicago Press, page 322. From the entry thigmomorphogenesis
Feminist utopias in particular are uniquely indeterminate, because their alternative spaces rely on fantastic biological transformations of gender, resulting in monogendered and androgynous societies.1990, Jean Pfaelzer, “Response: What Happened to History?”, in Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative, 1st edition, Knoxville: University of…. From the entry monogendered
Among commutative rings, the polynomial rings in a finite number of indeterminates enjoy important special properties and are frequently used in applications.1960, Oscar Zariski, Pierre Samuel, Commutative Algebra II, Springer, page 129. From the entry commutative ring
Make a transistor too small, for example, and electrons within it can simply vanish from one place and reappear in another because their location is quantumly indeterminate.2012 February 25, ‘An uncertain future’, The Economist. From the entry quantumly
These putative indeterminate imperfectives are innovative in form precisely because they add a manner meaning to the range of lexical meanings available to Proto-Slavic motion verbs.2010, Viktoria Hasko, Renee Perelmutter, “Introduction: Verbs of motion in Slavic languages: Paths for exploration”, in Viktoria Hasko…. From the entry imperfective
The court could sentence them to 'Borstal training', which meant that they were detained in a Borstal institution for an indeterminate period of between six months and two years.1989, Richard Meredith Jackson, J. R. Spencer, Jackson's Machinery of Justice, page 277. From the entry borstal training

Meaning of indeterminate

adjective Not accurately determined or determinable.
adjective Imprecise or vague.
adjective Not definitively or precisely determined, because of the presence of infinity or zero symbols used in any of several improper combinations.

Full definition of indeterminate

Questions about indeterminate in a sentence

How do you use indeterminate in a sentence?: Indeterminate is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Four miles to the east of Warmington, the River Cherwell flows into Cropredy under a bridge that in 1644 was the scene of another Civil War battle - with an equally indeterminate result.”
What is a short sentence with indeterminate?: “But, as such, it can only be an entirely indeterminate characteristic.”
What does indeterminate mean?: Indeterminate means not accurately determined or determinable.

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