Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use optional in a sentence

35 example sentences · adjective, noun

Optional means not compulsory; left to personal choice; elective. Example: “On that beach clothing is entirely optional.”

Examples of optional by meaning

adjectiveNot compulsory; left to personal choice; elective.

  • On that beach clothing is entirely optional.
  • As with any makeup step, eyeliner is completely optional.2004, Paula Begoun, The Complete Beauty Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Smart Beauty, Rodale Inc., →ISBN, page 419

More sentences with optional

  • No English adverbs have mandatory complements, and most don't even license optional ones.From the entry license
  • In some languages such signaling is optional, whereas in others it is obligate.From the entry obligate
  • Tipping your driver is optional but is much appreciated.From the entry driver
  • You are cordially invited to the Social Club's tenth Anniversary Celebration of its Brick-and-Mortar Building. Dress: Black Tie and White Tie are encouraged, but optional.From the entry black tie
  • A measure in Kentucky to make fluoridation optional stalled in the state Senate.2025 March 28, “Utah becomes the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water”, in CNN, sourced from Associated Press. From the entry fluoridation
  • Chinese (Mandarin) is taught at Westminster from the Lower Shell as an optional subject.2013, “Chinese (Mandarin)”, in Westminster School, retrieved 04 Dec 2023. From the entry shell
  • An optional cast-in-place concrete waler is shown at each anchor row location.2009, Howard A. Perko, Helical Piles: A Practical Guide to Design and Installation, page 374. From the entry waler
  • No CyberGoth is complete without gigantic "stompy" platform boots and the optional toy ray gun.2007, Raven Digitalis, Goth Craft: The Magickal Side of Dark Culture. From the entry cyber
  • Power-leveling is your only chance at completing the optional side quests.2006 October 1, Omari Gardner, “Game on!”, in Sunday Free Press, volume 176, number 150, Detroit, Mich.: Detroit Free Press Inc., →ISSN…. From the entry power-level
  • The following items are either the objects of a quest or vital components of an optional sidequest.2003, Bryan Stratton, Stephen Stratton, The Legend of Zelda®: The Wind Waker, Prima Games, →ISBN, page 19. From the entry sidequest
  • If not adding optional decoration, simply spoon all of madrilène over pâté and chill until set.1997, Jean Anderson, “[Appetizers & Snacks] Easy Chicken Liver Pâté”, in The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the…. From the entry madrilène
  • The mainframe system offers busable signal routing, remote power supply and an optional remote fader box.1997, Mix: Volume 21, Issues 1-6. From the entry busable
  • Supplementary relative clauses (which other books call “appositive relatives” or “non-restrictive relatives”) are optional parenthetical interruptions of sentences.2024, Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN, page 112. From the entry supplementary relative clause
  • The combobox pattern supports several optional behaviors.2024 October 22, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG), World Wide Web…. From the entry comboboxes
  • In December, the province made it optional for elected officials to swear an oath of allegiance to the king.2023 May 6, Vjosa Isai, “Canadians greet the coronation with a muted response.”, in The New York Times. From the entry loyalism
  • Yilan Creole has the two optional sentence-final markers ga and no, corresponding to Japanese ka and no, respectively.2018, Andreas Hölzl, A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond: An ecological perspective, Berlin: Language Science Press…. From the entry Yilan Creole
  • It also often tells you a few cheatcodes, or points you to the best parts of the game’s optional experiences.2012, Rachel Wagner, “Walkthrough”, in Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality (Media, Religion and Culture), Abingdon…. From the entry cheatcode
  • Suicide and murder do not make death optional.2011 October 27, Joachim L. Oberst, Heidegger on Language and Death: The Intrinsic Connection in Human Existence, A&C Black, →ISBN. From the entry unoptional
  • The market -- for toothpaste, mobile phones, and optional extras on cars -- passes through the metamarket of audiences.2009, Bernard Stiegler, David Barison, Acting out, →ISBN, page 63. From the entry metamarket
  • 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
  • A syce (chauffeur) is optional in each individual case.1949, Office of International Trade with Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, International Reference Service, volume 6, Washington…. From the entry houseboy
  • While prestiges are “a completely optional part of progression,” Kinetic is hoping to provide some more incentive for players to make use of the feature.2024 January 17, Anna Koselke, “Forget Lethal Company, another 10/10 co-op horror is getting an update”, in PCGamesN, Bath, Somerset…. From the entry prestige
  • While Apple has made activating them optional, platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Snapchat don't offer smartphone users the luxury of choosing blissful ignorance.2018 February 13, Holly Cabrera, “Don't show me the (read) receipts”, in The McGill Tribune, archived from the original on 16 May 2024. From the entry r-bomb
  • In Objective-C, a protocol member can be declared optional, meaning that this member doesn't have to be implemented by the adopter, but it may be.2016, Matt Neuburg, iOS 10 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 185. From the entry Objective-C
  • Substitute white chocolate for the bittersweet chocolate, and finish the krembos with more crumbled dehydrated raspberries and some optional chopped unsalted pistachios.2016 October, Uri Scheft with Raquel Pelzel, “[Sweets & Cookies] Raspberry Krembos”, in Breaking Breads: A New World of Israeli Baking…. From the entry krembo
  • As cross-siblings we're not in any way bound to each other; our relationship is optional, we don't have to get on – we just do.2013 December 28, Janelle Butterfield, “I bonded with my cross-sister – we share half-brothers”, in The Guardian, archived from the…. From the entry cross-sibling
  • It is not hard to imagine the ACD — and its associated computerette — becoming a splended "optional extra" in the vacationer's family car.1968, Popular Mechanics, volume 129, number 3, page 115. From the entry computerette
  • The header consists of an optional self-execution script, a magic word, a version number, and the word offset of the first instruction, relative to the magic word.2021, Clinton L. Jeffery, Build Your Own Programming Language, page 273. From the entry magic word
  • The flan ($8) was milky and smooth, and the optional rum popo — a rum crème that’s similar to egg nog — gave it a little kick.2019 February 13, Lennie Omalza, “This Mexican restaurant might have the best guac around Louisville”, in Courier Journal. From the entry rum popo
  • User calls RouteCollection.GetVirtualPath, passing in a RequestContext, a dictionary of values, and an optional route name used to select the correct route to generate the URL.2011, Jon Galloway, Phil Haack, Brad Wilson, Professional ASP.NET MVC 3. From the entry dictionary
  • Arvit is a reshut (an optional prayer) and although it has become established and is now mandatory, the Amidah is not repeated by the Sheli'ah Tzibbur.1996, Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer, page 162. From the entry reshut
  • BR offered discounts on round trips to encourage optional days out and weekends away, but it did not want to discount one-way tickets which were typically used for non-optional journeys.2020 December 2, Mark Smith, “Why fares reform is essential... and why it won't be easy”, in Rail, pages 34–35. From the entry non-optional
  • One-line business is optional; three-line business compulsory; when it's two lines you have to be on parade unless you have secured a 'pair' and cleared it with the 'pairing whip'.1999, Gyles Brandreth, chapter 3, in Breaking the Code. From the entry pair

Meaning of optional

  1. adjective Not compulsory; left to personal choice; elective.
  2. noun Something that is not compulsory, especially part of an academic course.
  3. noun In various programming languages, a kind of variable that is assigned a specific data type but may or may not hold an actual value.

Full definition of optional

Questions about optional in a sentence

How do you use optional in a sentence?
Optional is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “On that beach clothing is entirely optional.”
What is a short sentence with optional?
“On that beach clothing is entirely optional.”
What does optional mean?
Optional means not compulsory; left to personal choice; elective.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: optional (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:

Cite this page: “How to use optional in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/optional. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.