How to use ineffective in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective
Ineffective means not having the desired effect; ineffectual; otiose. Example: “His policies may be ineffective, but he is never at a loss for words.”
Examples of ineffective by meaning
adjectiveLacking in ability; incompetent or inadequate.
- Fire ants circumvented the problem of an ineffective sting by having an unusual and highly effective venom that when daubed or sprayed on other ants penetrates their waxy protective integumental barrier and kills or disables them.2016, Justin O. Schmidt, The Sting of the Wild, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 102
More sentences with ineffective
- His policies may be ineffective, but he is never at a loss for words.From the entry at a loss
- An anti-personnel mine will kill a soldier but is ineffective against a tank.From the entry anti-personnel
- The "just say no" advertising campaign was mostly ineffective demarketing of illegal drugs.From the entry demarketing
- We're in the small percentage of cases in which condoms are ineffective.2015, Beth Burgoon, About That Night, Don Mills, O.N.: Harlequin Superromance, →ISBN, page 123. From the entry condom
- Engaging extrahippocampal memory systems renders the task ineffective for quantifying HPC-based memory impairments.2015 July 29, Darryl C. Gidyk et al., “Barriers to developing a valid rodent model of Alzheimer's disease: from behavioral analysis to…. From the entry extrahippocampal
- Sales 1.0 —and its outdated and ineffective sales tactics— has left the building.2013, Josiane Feigon, Smart Sales Manager: The Ultimate Playbook for Building and ..., AMACOM, →ISBN, page 47. From the entry has left the building
- Unfortunately, Spanish fly removes all sensitivity from the organ, rendering it ineffective.2012, Richard Webster, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions, page 11. From the entry Spanish fly
- But it was disturbingly ineffective during the McCarthy witch hunts and the US invasion of Iraq.2009 September 23, Erica Noonan, “Reporting on the threat posed when reliable reporting fades away”, in Boston.com (The Boston Globe)…. From the entry shoe-leather
- But it is ineffective in respect of certain people who do not obey the precipient will.2008, Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, page 89. From the entry precipient
- How to help the poor in nonreforming countries where aid dollars are proving ineffective?2000, Manorama Gotur, The World Bank: partnerships for development. From the entry nonreforming
- They can also act maleficently by being overly aggressive and risking iatrogenic harm with ineffective therapies.1996, Philip C. Hébert, Doing Right: A Practical Guide to Ethics for Physicians and Medical Trainees, Oxford University Press, USA, →ISBN…. From the entry maleficently
- Inexperienced or ineffective reader-writers often misrevise their drafts, their plans and goals.1988, Karen Vaught-Alexander, Contexts which Connect Writers, Readers, Texts, page 53. From the entry misrevise
- The doing of an act which might not lawfully be done, is nugatory, ineffective and vacuitous.1972, Gunnar Myrdal, Seth S. King, Asian Drama; an Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations. From the entry vacuitous
- Sometimes the pilot finds that his elevator or rudder is utterly ineffective.1971, G[rigori] A[leksandrovich] Tokaty, A History and Philosophy of Fluid Mechanics, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire: G. T. Foulis & Co.…. From the entry shock stalling
- Unfortunately, your characterfully arranged business card turns out ineffective because of a poor choice of colors.1923 January, J. L. Frazier, “Specimens”, in Harry Hillman, editor, The Inland Printer, volume 70, number 4, page 548. From the entry characterfully
- She wore a light veil, but it was ineffective in concealing the unattraction of the face beneath.1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados. From the entry dowdily
- He was sacked just once but spent the evening throwing short, ineffective passes that did little to advance the ball.2016 October 25, Matt Bonesteel, “The Texans have a Brock Osweiler problem”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 02 Jan…. From the entry advance the ball
- Because MERS is a virus, antibiotics are ineffective.2015 June 4, Donald G. McNeil Jr., “What You Need to Know About MERS”, in The New York Times. From the entry mers
- Aprotinin exhibited nearly stoichiometric inhibition of prostasin and matriptase, but was much weaker towards HAT and was completely ineffective versus tryptase.2015 October 21, “Divergent Inhibitor Susceptibility among Airway Lumen-Accessible Tryptic Proteases”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry prostasin
- Communication may be ineffective if the wrong medium is used.2015, Andy Mottershead, Alex Grant, Judith Kelt, OCR Business for A Level. From the entry singagram
- Disorganised deskspace is a major cause of being ineffective.2011, Sandy Clyne, Organise Your Home Office. From the entry deskspace
- Embracing difference or culturally ascribed abjection with the aim of overcoming or dissipating it would be both naive and ineffective.2009 September 10, W. C. Harris, Queer Externalities: Hazardous Encounters in American Culture, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 98. From the entry abjection
- First, it’s ineffective, because the country will never be ziplocked as tightly as he wants it to be.2008 February 21, Lawrence Downes, “Broken Borders and Dover Sole: My Lunch With Lou Dobbs”, in New York Times. From the entry ziplocked
- The plan eschewed traditional antilottery arguments as being politically ineffective.2007, Michael Nelson, John Lyman Mason, How the South Joined the Gambling Nation, page 149. From the entry antilottery
- Firestopping, even if installed, is often made ineffective by maintenance work or new installations, for example, cable TV.2006, Francis L. Brannigan, Building Construction for the Fire Service, page 543. From the entry firestopping
- On a similar note just imagine if we could persuade companies that sending junk smail is hugely ineffective.2000 August 5, “Robin” (username), “Re: Letter from india”, in uk.politics.misc and other newsgroups, Usenet. From the entry smail
- The parasitoids were found to be ineffective in controlling SWF on E. pulcherrima along roadsides in Chutien, Pingtung Hsien.1999, Ching-Chin (錢景秦) Chien, 周樑鎰 [Liang-Yih Chou], 張淑貞 [Shu-Chen Chang], “臺灣地區螺旋粉蝨(Aleurodicus dispersus)(同翅目:粉蝨科)寄生蜂之引進、增殖及釋放…. From the entry Chutien
- Incubation of HepG2 cells with the copper chelator bathocuproine was completely ineffective (Fig. 2 C), showing ion specificity.1998 January 30, Chinmay K. Mukhopadhyay et al., “Role of Ceruloplasmin in Cellular Iron Uptake”, in Science, volume 279, number 5351…. From the entry bathocuproine
- There were some ineffective, blundery kinds of things I did.1995, James W. Clinton, quoting Betty Boardman, “Betty Boardman”, in The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965–1972, Niwot…. From the entry blundery
- Abbās’s achievement made it possible for Ṣafawid rule to survive a succession of largely ineffective shāhs for a further century.1988, David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797, Longman Group UK, →ISBN. From the entry shāh
- In the meanwhile on quite a different front we are beginning to attack our ineffective and beastly hospital.1953, Humphry Osmond, chapter 1953, in Cynthia Carson Bisbee et al., editors, Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and…. From the entry Augean stables
- The W.G.A. owes a debt of gratitude to unions like the U.A.W., too, for modeling effective — and at times ineffective — collective bargaining techniques.2023 September 29, Adam Seth Litwin, “Hollywood’s Deal With Screenwriters Just Rewrote the Rules Around A.I.”, in The New York Times…. From the entry UAW
- FinOps demands you acknowledge that the old ways of managing infrastructure aren't just ineffective; they create situations where runaway cloud costs can threaten the business.2023, J.R. Storment, Mike Fuller, Cloud FinOps, O'Reilly, →ISBN. From the entry FinOps
- A project may contain sub-projects or mere libraries were sources contained in those libraries cannot be determined prehand and it rendered the whole process ineffective.2014 September 12, Pritpal Bedi, “Announcement: HbIDE Implements Harbour/xHarbour Debugger”, in comp.lang.xharbour (Usenet). From the entry prehand
- Percy struck some of the people who worked with him as an ineffective legislator, marshmallowy and yielding in the way of many moderate politicians.2012, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, →ISBN, page 226. From the entry marshmallowy
- He called the former Ontario cabinet minister’s prescription for the city’s problems, “a bit like cutting your lawn with a nail-cutter”—ineffective and inconsequential.2010 October 21, Mohammed Adam, “[Clive] Doucet: ‘We may just climb mountain’”, in Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ont.: Postmedia Network, →ISSN…. From the entry nail-cutter
- The anemia was characterized by hypochromasia of the erythrocytes, hyperferricemia, absence of hemolysis, and hyperplastic, ineffective, sideroblastic erythropoiesis of the bone marrow.1976, Excerpta medica. Section 25: Hematology, volume 14, page 335. From the entry hyperferricemia
- If too closely related, it would lose its enticive quality, or even worse, it would be altogether ineffective in remodelling existing behavior.1971, Reuven Feuerstein, David Krasilowsky, “The Treatment Group Technique”, in Martin Wolins, Meir Gottesmann, editors, Group Care: An…. From the entry enticive
- The hostility Garrus nurtures for the ineffective Citadel Security Services (C-Sec) bureaucracy has an oedipal tinge since his father, Castis Vakarian, is an exemplary by-the-books C-Sec officer.2023, Jerome Winter, “"There Is No War, There Is Only Harvest": Diplomatic Realpolitik and Combat Gameplay in Mass Effect”, in BioWare's…. From the entry oedipal
Meaning of ineffective
- adjective Not having the desired effect; ineffectual; otiose.
- adjective Lacking in ability; incompetent or inadequate.
Questions about ineffective in a sentence
- How do you use ineffective in a sentence?
- Ineffective is used as an adjective. For example: “His policies may be ineffective, but he is never at a loss for words.”
- What is a short sentence with ineffective?
- “Because MERS is a virus, antibiotics are ineffective.”
- What does ineffective mean?
- Ineffective means not having the desired effect; ineffectual; otiose.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ineffective (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 ineffective in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ineffective. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
