Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use obligatory in a sentence

26 example sentences · adjective

Obligatory means imposing obligation, legally, morally, or otherwise; binding; mandatory. Example: “For Baha'is, there's a difference between obligatory prayers and devotional prayers.”

Examples of obligatory by meaning

adjectiveImposing obligation, legally, morally, or otherwise; binding; mandatory.

  • an obligatory promise

More sentences with obligatory

  • For Baha'is, there's a difference between obligatory prayers and devotional prayers.From the entry prayer
  • I move to repeal the rule regarding obligatory school uniform.From the entry move
  • When we finally get to the obligatory scene involving Karma and a white policeman (Mr.2018 September 19, Jesse Green, “Review: In ‘The Revolving Cycles,’ What Happened to Terrell?”, in New York Times. From the entry Pirandellian
  • P(c) – cyclic parthenogenesis, P(o) – obligatory parthenogenesis in anholocyclic species, B – additional chromosomes.2015 July 9, Ilya A. Gavrilov-Zimin, Andrey V. Stekolshchikov, D.C. Gautam, “General trends of chromosomal evolution in Aphidococca…. From the entry anholocyclic
  • Microchemical testing may be obligatory in those instances where the evidence has no observable structure.2011, William Jerry Chisum, Brent E. Turvey, Crime Reconstruction, →ISBN, page 262. From the entry lacrymator
  • And the obligatory "No Fat Chicks" sticker on the rear window.1997 April 22, Nathan Wong, “Chick Magnet's”, in aus.cars (Usenet). From the entry chromie
  • His arms were not the elbowless sausages with baby-fists that seem obligatory among sumo wrestlers.1992, David Benjamin, Joy of Sumo. From the entry elbowless
  • There are several obligatory postmodernist quirks, such as the wildly overscaled sculptural excrescences at the roof line.1988 June 10, Ed Zotti, “One for the Books”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry overscaled
  • The fourth type, quadradic solidarity, with four obligatory constituents, is not well attested.1982, Pacific Linguistics - Issue 75, →ISBN, page 38. From the entry quadradic
  • She waves a kiwirita around while I carefully balance a massive double Mumbai martini for the obligatory exchange of digital cards.2010 September 28, Adam Dunn, “Section 1”, in Rivers of Gold: A Novel, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 13. From the entry kiwirita
  • I ask the obligatory questions about how he thought she was doing and if he changed the medicine.2007 05, Angela Thompson, Where the Heck Is That Place Called Hope?, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 129. From the entry gory
  • It is obligatory that the stage be left empty.2006, Olga Freidenberg, Image and Concept, page 271. From the entry exodos
  • The necessity to be able to answer a wh-question is thus a criterion distinguishing obligatory and optional modifications.1980, Petr Piťha, “Case Frames of Nouns”, in D. J. van Alkemade et al., editors, Linguistic Studies Offered to Berthe Siertsema…. From the entry wh-question
  • All of that could read like the obligatory kitchen-sinkery of so many postmodern novels, too suspicious of conventional narrative to settle down.2016, Kathryn Schulz, “Race and racing in C. E. Morgan's ‘The Sport of Kings’”, in The New Yorker, page 66. From the entry kitchen-sinkery
  • Especially about law and its obligatory force was Cromwell's head clear, making clearer distinctions than Wolsey with his conscience or More with his Christendom.2015 March 12 [1934], Kenneth Pickthorn, Early Tudor Government, volume 2, Cambridge University Press, page 137. From the entry Christendom
  • The karyotype was mononucleolar: one obligatory nucleolus (N) was well developed in sec. 3, near the centromere and the telomere in arm G.2015, Ninel A. Petrova et al., “Karyotypical characteristics of two allopatric African populations of anhydrobiotic Polypedilum Kieffer…. From the entry mononucleolar
  • Obligatory cat pun coming up . . . this book is a purrfect gift for the cat lady or cat dude in your life.2013, NPR book review, quoted on the praise page of John Bradshaw, Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to…. From the entry purrfect
  • Housed in the beached tugboat Danie Hugo near the jetty, the Tug is something of an obligatory destination for any dinner-goer in Swakopmund.2010, Matthew D. Firestone, Adam Karlin, Botswana & Namibia, →ISBN, page 324. From the entry dinner-goer
  • Nevertheless, the art of fighting on foot was an obligatory part of military education which even a charioted knight could ignore at his own peril.1989, Sarva Daman Singh, Ancient Indian Warfare, page 18. From the entry charioted
  • Whether you're there to buy a horse or merely watch other people buying horses, it is almost obligatory to puff on an exotic cheroot.1981 04, The Bulletin. From the entry exotic cheroot
  • There are the obligatory golden-hour shots, but her Insta also has quirky strength-training videos and footage of total yard sales—like her endoing on a training ride this spring.2019 December 9, “The 2019 Outsiders of the Year”, in Outside. From the entry yard sale
  • Here, we present an exceptional case of carcinisation, with the South-American porcellanid, Allopetrolisthes spinifrons, an obligatory commensal of the sea-anemone species Phymactis papillosa and Phymanthea pluvia.2010, Alexandra Hiller, Carlos Antonio Viviana, Bernd Werding, “Hypercarcinisation: An Evolutionary Novelty in the Commensal Porcellanid…. From the entry carcinisation
  • Jimmy Carter is the third President in a row to take a stab at reforming the “welfare mess” — an almost obligatory pejorative of political oratory.1978 July 9, Robert Lekachman, “Welfare Needs Help”, in The New York Times. From the entry take a stab at
  • “Oh yes,” he murmured in a tone of obligatory surprise, as he proceeded to make the kind of 2 which he attributed to Margaret's style of chirography.1921, Ben Travers, chapter 7, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC. From the entry murmur
  • According to standard definitions of supererogation, acts are supererogatory if and only if they are neither morally obligatory nor morally prohibited, but nevertheless have moral value (are morally good, etc.).1992, Phillip Montague, “Beneficence and Supererogation”, in In the Interests of Others: An Essay in Moral Philosophy (Philosophical…. From the entry supererogation

Meaning of obligatory

  1. adjective Imposing obligation, legally, morally, or otherwise; binding; mandatory.
  2. adjective Requiring a matter or obligation.

Full definition of obligatory

Questions about obligatory in a sentence

How do you use obligatory in a sentence?
Obligatory is used as an adjective. For example: “For Baha'is, there's a difference between obligatory prayers and devotional prayers.”
What is a short sentence with obligatory?
“an obligatory promise”
What does obligatory mean?
Obligatory means imposing obligation, legally, morally, or otherwise; binding; mandatory.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obligatory (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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