Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use minus in a sentence

40 example sentences · preposition, noun, adjective

Minus means made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity). Example: “Seven minus two is five.”

Examples of minus by meaning

prepositionMade less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity).

  • Seven minus two is five.

prepositionWithout; deprived of.

  • I walked out minus my coat.

nounA downside or disadvantage.

  • Over the years they had assessed each other’s plusses and minusses and settled for the difference.1989, A[udrey] L[ilian] Barker, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 111
  • As with LCR tout court the question is less to do with the plusses and minusses of the individual ideologies in themselves than in their relationship with their opposite numbers, in this case of Reason with Emotion.2015, Peter Wyeth, “[Commentaries] Reason”, in The Matter of Vision: Affective Neurobiology & Cinema, New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey...
  • When Morrison mulls the pluses and minuses associated with rebuking Kelly for undermining the government’s public health messaging, the prime minister faces a genuine substantive dilemma, and that goes to the risks of amplification.2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, “Scott Morrison must heed the lesson of Donald Trump and slap down Craig Kelly”, in The Guardian...

adjectiveBeing a negative quantity; pertaining to a deficit or reduction.

  • a minus number

adjectiveThat is below zero by (a specified amount) on a scale.

  • minus seven degrees
  • Arriving during late spring in the satellite's southern hemisphere, Voyager found the coldest body in the solar system, minus 235°C (-391°F).1990 August, Rick Gore, “Neptune: Voyager's Last Picture Show”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 42

adjectiveRanking just below (a designated rating).

  • He got a grade of B minus for his essay.

verbTo subtract.

  • (The terms positive and negative feedback are now part of everyday language where the meanings are reversed: in cybernetic systems, positive feedback is undesirable for it indicates that the discrepancy is “plussing,” rather than “minussing” to zero.)1990, William T. Scott, “Systems and structures”, in The Possibility of Communication (Approaches to Semiotics; 87), Berlin; New York...
  • He also minussed the seventy-two.”2012, Jennifer S. Thom, “Opening Mathematical Spaces of Their Own”, in Re-Rooting the Learning Space: Minding Where Children’s Mathematics...

More sentences with minus

  • The sum of expenditures and taxes minus total income is a loss, when this difference is positive.From the entry loss
  • A battery has both a plus pole and a minus pole.From the entry plus
  • The thermometer says zero, but with the wind chill it's more like minus five.From the entry wind chill
  • Three-quarters minus a quarter is a half.From the entry half
  • Minus the allowance, the total came to thirteen tons.From the entry allowance
  • A polygon's or polyhedron's Euler characteristic is just the number of corners minus the number of edges plus the number of faces.From the entry Euler characteristic
  • It is the Russian tricolour “minus the red blood”, he said.2022 June 7, Luke Harding, “Russian-language Ukrainian TV channel aims to topple Putin”, in The Guardian, page 20. From the entry white-blue-white flag
  • It's like buying bottle service at the clerb in Vegas (minus all the disappointment).2018, “What we did in Florence, Italy”, in Nom Life. From the entry clerb
  • The minus “-” indicates that the high tone is downleveled in a sequence of high tones.2011, Thomas Pechmann, Christopher Habel, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Language Production, page 127. From the entry downlevel
  • They became shorthand for English style, like Staffordshire spaniels minus the tweeness.2009 March 13, Christopher Petkanas, “Blade Runner”, in New York Times. From the entry tweeness
  • But the music is the same, and so is the face, plus or minus a scowl.2007 July 3, Kelefa Sanneh, “In Rap, Inner War Can Be a Trap”, in New York Times. From the entry sweatshirted
  • Is that an A plus for New York, or is that an F minus?1990, Dean M. Sagar, Franchising in the U.S. Economy: Prospects and Problems, page 27. From the entry F minus
  • He didn’t look so much nonplussed, as distinctly minussed by the enthusiasm of my acquiescence.1990, Neville Steed, Black Mail, Leicester, Leics.: Ulverscroft, published 1992, →ISBN, pages 175–176. From the entry minussed
  • Not everything is going to be as safe or as easy to evaluate as "ice minus".1985, American Council on Science and Health, ACSH News & Views: Volumes 6-8, page 19. From the entry ice minus
  • Next to me at a minus distance stands a country woman in a shawl and plush jacket.1972, The Malahat Review, numbers 21–24, page 30. From the entry sooshka
  • The public is not only nonplussed by rising prices but also minussed.1951 August 8, “Bypaths”, in Pathfinder, volume 58, number 16, Chicago, Ill.: Farm Journal, Inc., page 51. From the entry minussed
  • Twice the angler raised the squirming bait; but each time minus the scaly victim.1916, Everybody's magazine. From the entry fishly
  • An extended digit is constrained to betanumeric characters, which are alphanumerics minus vowels and the letter 'l' (ell).2024 April 25, Wikipedia contributors, “Check digit”, in English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. From the entry betanumeric
  • During this period, minimum temperatures in some parts of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang could fall to below minus 30 degrees Celsius.2023 November 23, “China renews alerts for cold waves, strong winds”, in EFE, archived from the original on 23 Nov 2023. From the entry Heilongjiang
  • I was positively Pippi Longstocking, minus the pigtails.2012, Kate Bornstein, A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology, and leaves…. From the entry Pippi Longstocking
  • Snowstorms in the Tacheng city in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have brought lows of minus 25 degrees Celsius.2011 January 5, “Factbox: China winter weather latest developments”, in Sui-Lee Wee, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 13 Oct…. From the entry Tacheng
  • "Minus the fleas!" and he started changing.2007, Alice J. Capen, The Secret Adventures of John, Paul, George and Ringo. From the entry catself
  • I got an F minus on a geometry test.2005, Lawrence Sutin, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, page 46. From the entry F minus
  • The sign of coefficient a(3) in the general formula of Table 2 should be plus instead of minus.2001, Astronomy & Astrophysics, volume 376, issue 3, p. 1039. From the entry read
  • By the rule of Colel, any word can be equal to any other word by plus or minus one.2000, David Allen Hulse, The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide, page xxviii. From the entry rule of Colel
  • Click on the plus mark to list the subgroups, click on the minus sign to close that folder.1996 August 15, J Gerber, “News Groups”, in news.newusers.questions (Usenet), retrieved 15 Aug 2022. From the entry plus mark
  • If you misforecast right now's load you really inject x plus or minus the amount of the misforecast.1995, Energy Modeling, page 3. From the entry misforecast
  • One has only to unfog the patient by adding minus sphere to push the focal lines onto the retina (Fig 35).1980, Ophthalmology Basic and Clinical Science Course, 1980-1981. From the entry unfog
  • Evans got even an alpha minus; only T.1957, R. Avery, “This Week’s Competition”, in Time & Tide, volume 38, number 1, page 184. From the entry beta

Meaning of minus

  1. preposition Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity).
  2. preposition Without; deprived of.
  3. noun The minus sign (−).

Full definition of minus

Questions about minus in a sentence

How do you use minus in a sentence?
Minus is used as a preposition, noun and adjective. For example: “Seven minus two is five.”
What is a short sentence with minus?
“a minus number”
What does minus mean?
Minus means made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity).

Source and license

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