How to use instrumental in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective, noun
Instrumental means essential or central; of great importance or relevance. Example: “He was instrumental in conducting the business.”
Examples of instrumental by meaning
adjectiveEssential or central; of great importance or relevance.
- He was instrumental in conducting the business.
- Few songwriters have been as instrumental in creating the mold for American music.2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative...
adjectivePertaining to, made by, or prepared for an instrument, especially a musical instrument (rather than the human voice).
- an instrumental part
adjectiveOf or relating to a case expressing means or agency, generally corresponding to the English use of prepositions such as...
- the instrumental case
nounA composition written or performed without lyrics or singing, using a lead instrument to replace vocals.
- I recommend this album in the face of the fact that five of the eleven songs are the purest filler, dull instrumentals with a harmonica rifling over an indifferent rhythm section.1977, Stereo Review, volume 38, page 70
More sentences with instrumental
- The gimong was instrumental in the building up of other gimongs at least 5 of them.2024 June 10, Diocese of Baguio-CURIA, Facebook. From the entry gimong
- The nine transrelative cases are the thematic, instrumental, absolutive, affective, stimulative, effectuative, ergative, dative, and inducive.2023, John Quijada, Grammar of The New Ithkuil. From the entry thematic
- Drawovers, such as the one shown here, were instrumental in refining those details.2016, Sanjay Patel, The Art of Sanjay's Super Team, page 48. From the entry drawover
- In addition, there will be a small instrumental group, perhaps composed of four ʻukulele.2011, Anthony J. Palmer, “Hawaiʻi Calls: Musics of the Islands”, in Michael Haas, editor, Barack Obama, the Aloha Zen President: How a Son…. From the entry ʻukulele
- The internment of eventscape is instrumental in incorporating new generations of Japanese Americans into the internment story.2009, Teresita Majewski, David Gaimster, International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, →ISBN, page 61. From the entry eventscape
- This Toronto group plays multitextured instrumentals that veer from clangy turbulence to pastoral, acoustic daydreams.2007 March 23, The New York Times, “Pop and Rock Listings”, in New York Times. From the entry multitextured
- Were our modern instrumental sloppery conceivable, had they really grasped the most essential thing in Beethoven's tone-poems?1977, Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, William Ashton Ellis, Life of Richard Wagner - Volume 3, page 305. From the entry sloppery
- Fly has a swingy rhythm and some swell guitar work in its instrumental interludes.1942, Billboard, volume 54, number 15. From the entry swingy
- Rich Jews used to engage Christian music-teachers to teach their daughters German vocal and instrumental music.1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 385. From the entry engage
- The reform is instrumental in making the Schengen area more resilient to present and future crises at its external borders.2024 May 24, “Schengen area: Council adopts update of Schengen Borders Code”, in Council of the European Union. From the entry borderless
- Over the past decade, private equity has been instrumental in consolidating that industry; Worldpay and Nexi serve as two good examples.2023 March 16, Rupak Ghose, “Can payments eat the world?”, in Financial Times. From the entry spaghetti
- No organization had been more instrumental than the White Helmets in supplying the mood music for Western military intervention.2020, Max Blumenthal, The Management of Savagery, page 303. From the entry mood music
- In the description of the upload, Brad gave credit to Mine Timelapser for providing the soundfont for K.K Slider’s instrumentals.2020 August 22, Max Mastrogiacomo, “Gravity Falls Composer Recreates Theme Song As Animal Crossing’s KK Slider”, in Screen Rant (news). From the entry soundfont
- She was instrumental in taking an idea and rough drawing and creating a graphic that works for this book.2014, Regis J. Jr (Bud) Bates, Securing VoIP: Keeping Your VoIP Network Safe, page xiii. From the entry rough draw
- UHV and 77 K operation should give rise to insanely good instrumental stability and provide superextraordinarily clear images of stripes.2013 November 18, Professor Moriarty, “The Villain’s New Stripes”, in fakeraphazlab.wordpress.com, archived from the original on 09 Aug 2021. From the entry superextraordinarily
- But not for the compounds I study — the fun ones! — which are called agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun compounds.[2013 November 14, Brianne Hughes, “Cutthroat Backstabbers: The Devious World of English Verb-Noun Compounding”, in YouTube, archived from…. From the entry cutthroat compound
- Music Content: highly florid and mellismatic melodies; background instrumental riffs and chordal harmonies; limited instrumental solos or instrumental features.2012, Lenard C. Bowie, African American Musical Heritage, →ISBN. From the entry mellismatic
- Ratatat re-up with their second set of '80s video game-worthy instrumentals, full of stabby guitars and disco-y synths.2006, Kory Grow, review of Ratatat's album Classics, CMJ New Music Monthly, August 2006. From the entry stabby
- Joseph had been instrumental in managing the successful quarantine period.2005, B. J. Lucian, “Part I: Prof Josh”, in Professor Baker’s Hand Grenade […], [United States]: Bookman Publishing & Marketing, →ISBN…. From the entry pandamonium
- Interceptive actions are common in everyday life and are instrumental in helping humans to adapt to their complex and uncertain environments.2004, Simon Bennett, Keith Davids, Geert J.P. Savelsbergh, Interceptive Actions in Sport: Information and Movement. From the entry interceptive
- Execution, the band's second record, burns with intense weltschmerz, its existential crises cloaked in buoyant instrumental hooks and shimmery arrangements.2002 October, Maya Singer, “Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things: Saddle Creek”, in CMJ New Music Monthly, number 106, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry weltschmerz
- It is intralingual translation which is most likely to train us out of instrumental attitudes to language and into mediumic ones.2000, Clive Scott, Translating Baudelaire, page 78. From the entry mediumic
- I also agree there's more instrumental development that needs doing.1985, Carl Sagan, Contact, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 120. From the entry palimpsest
- We illustrate the importance of testing the instrumental variable model by evaluating the exogeneity of college proximity using the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men..2016, Linbo Wang, James M. Robins, Thomas S. Richardson, “On falsification of the binary instrumental variable model”, in arXiv. From the entry exogeneity
- Where the human biological life is of a kind that is lacking in the capacity for such intrinsically valuable achievement, it lacks even instrumental value.2014, John Kleinig, Valuing Life, page 140. From the entry biological life
- Palin represented a brand of conservative politics that was Twitterable and has since been instrumental in the rise of the tea party.2011 October 6, LZ Granderson, “Sarah Palin proves she's no fool”, in CNN. From the entry twitterable
- Clapton kept the big guns for last, finishing the set off with Derek and the Domino's "Layla", complete with the haunting instrumentals at song's end.2007 March 26, Yuri Wuensch, “Eric Clapton simply masterful”, in canoe.ca, Canada, retrieved 20 Aug 2011. From the entry big gun
- Cummings has been instrumental in the design of a computer simulation that he says will teach "the basic blocking and tackling of urban warfare.2002 November 16, Ron Martz, “U.S. soldiers train for urban warfare; 'A knife fight in a phone booth,' is what troops liken it to. U.S.…. From the entry blocking and tackling
- It views humans as above our outside of nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or “use,” value to nature.1996, Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Doubleday, →ISBN, page 7. From the entry deep ecology
- At least the mostly instrumental kickoff “Long Tailed Winter Bird” offers a hooky acoustic guitar riff you can’t blame McCartney for hanging on to as long as he does.2020 November 9, Gwen Ihnat, “With McCartney III, Paul McCartney offers lessons from a legendary life”, in The A.V. Club. From the entry hooky
- Uncoupling of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation is caused by excessive free cytosolic Ca 2+ which is instrumental in directing the cells to follow the executionary part of apoptosis.2015 October 6, “Andrographolide Analogue Induces Apoptosis and Autophagy Mediated Cell Death in U937 Cells by Inhibition of PI3K/Akt/mTOR…. From the entry executionary
- In wistful instrumental stretches the song slides into an extended keyboard solo of unexpected (even for Womack & Womack) minimalism and economy, a slow jazzstep in zero gravity.2015 August 24, “The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s”, in Pitchfork, archived from the original on 15 Dec 2022. From the entry jazzstep
- Double-neck guitjoist Joe Scott and cellist Hannah Alkirem have performed across the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe and have released 10 albums of acoustic, instrumental fusion.2014 February 27, Asher Brown-Pinsky, “10-Day Forecast”, in The Gainesville Sun. From the entry guitjoist
- Combining two ergatives in one clause is not always ungrammatical in Agul; but one of the ergatives must be used in a non-agentive function, e.g. instrumental or temporal.2012, Michael A. Daniel, Timur A. Maisak, Solmaz R. Merdanova, “Causatives in Agul”, in Pirkko Suihkonen, Bernard Comrie, Valery D.…. From the entry ergative
- Former CNNers who were instrumental in helping me grow, as well as offering me career guidance, include Sue Bunda, Peter Dykstra, Sandy Malcolm, and Henry Mauldin.2012, Bonnie Schneider, Extreme Weather: A Guide to Surviving Flash Floods, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Heat Waves, Snowstorms, Tsunamis and…. From the entry CNNer
Meaning of instrumental
- adjective Essential or central; of great importance or relevance.
- adjective Serving as an instrument, medium, means, or agency.
- adjective Pertaining to, made by, or prepared for an instrument, especially a musical instrument (rather than the human voice).
Questions about instrumental in a sentence
- How do you use instrumental in a sentence?
- Instrumental is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “He was instrumental in conducting the business.”
- What is a short sentence with instrumental?
- “an instrumental part”
- What does instrumental mean?
- Instrumental means essential or central; of great importance or relevance.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: instrumental (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 instrumental in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/instrumental. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
