Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use phrase in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Phrase means a short written or spoken expression. Example: “I've made progress, but this is still, in Churchill's phrase, just "the end of the beginning."”

Examples of phrase by meaning

nounA short written or spoken expression.

  • I've made progress, but this is still, in Churchill's phrase, just "the end of the beginning."

nounA word or, more commonly, a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence, always...

  • Holonyms: clause, sentence; phrasing, phraseology, turn of phrase; phrase-book; document, message; language; communication
  • Congratulations on managing to use the phrase “preponderant criterion” in a chart (“On your marks”, November 9th).2013 November 30, Paul Davis, “Letters: Say it as simply as possible”, in The Economist, volume 409, number 8864
  • There is always a head in a phrase.2024, Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN, page 12

verbTo express (an action, thought or idea) by means of particular words.

  • I wasn't sure how to phrase my condolences without sounding patronising.

More sentences with phrase

  • Phrases such as officer-involved shooting are often criticized as examples of passive voice.From the entry passive voice
  • It is not the case that every unfamiliar phrase is an idiom.From the entry case
  • The noun phrase "red blood cell", the acronym "RBC", and the word "erythrocyte" are synonymous terms.From the entry term
  • An idiomatic phrase that warns us against Pollyannaism is "don't count your chickens before they're hatched".From the entry idiomatic
  • Nouns indicating status often appear in anarthrous noun phrases, ie, as bare nouns.From the entry anarthrous
  • Bart Simpson's stock phrase "I didn't do it" was once lampooned on the show itself.From the entry stock phrase
  • Though derived from a verb phrase, "kickass" can be used interjectionally.From the entry interjectionally
  • Mirror punishments are often justified by the Biblical phrase 'an eye for an eye'.From the entry mirror punishment
  • In the noun phrase “noun phrase”, “noun” is the determinans and “phrase” is the determinatum.From the entry determinans
  • The verb "take" is delexical in the phrase "take a shower".From the entry delexical
  • The phrase "computationally impractical to reverse" is a statistically improbable phrase found in the Bitcoin documentation.From the entry statistically improbable phrase
  • In English, idiom requires the indefinite article in a phrase such as "she's an engineer", whereas in Spanish, idiom forbids it.From the entry idiom
  • You will never know the exact atomic time when you started reading this phrase; of course, that's inconsequential.From the entry inconsequential
  • The sermon was full of hackneyed phrases and platitudes.From the entry hackneyed
  • In the phrase “attributive adjective”, “attributive” is the attributive adjective.From the entry attributive adjective
  • Some dialects of a language may use a certain term or phrase in a phatic way, even if other dialects don't.From the entry phatic
  • This author has a beautiful turn of phrase.From the entry turn of phrase
  • In the phrases ‘I am running tomorrow’ and ‘I am running now,’ the main verb is in the non-past tense.From the entry non-past
  • "Madam I'm Adam" is a palindromic phrase.From the entry palindromic
  • The unintended ambiguity of the phrase was a double-edged sword: it spurred litigation but it also ended up shielding good-faith actors.From the entry double-edged sword
  • The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional.From the entry compositional
  • A noun phrase is overspecified when it is used in a context where a pronoun would have been unambiguous.From the entry overspecify
  • Guns and butter is a syndetic phrase.From the entry syndetic
  • Japanese has postsyntactic compounds that consist of whole phrases.From the entry postsyntactic
  • This sentence contains a nominal phrase.From the entry nominal
  • A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish".From the entry defaultist
  • When a premodifying phrase (such as this one) is used, the meaning of the clause that follows it (such as this one) is qualified or altered.From the entry premodify
  • You might phrase it like this, for example: “I’ve noticed you’ve been making some healthier choices.2026 January 29, Angela Haupt, “Can I Ask Someone if They’re on Ozempic?”, in TIME, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2026. From the entry out
  • What the phrase lacks in poetry it makes up for in pithiness.2026 February 16, Frank Bruni, quoting Pam Bondi, “Pam Bondi and the MAGA Brand of Insult Politics”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry washed up
  • In some areas, US investors have been all-in on Europe, or Europemaxxing, to modify a phrase.2026 April 1, John Thornhill, “US investors prefer Europemaxxing to Europebashing”, in Financial Times, archived from the original on 02…. From the entry -maxx
  • Wilson has tweeted the phrase “Ausländer Raus” at least four times, including the slogan, “Deutschland den Deutschen.2025 March 5, Anna Merlan, “This Pentagon Press Secretary Has a Long History of Bigoted and Xenophobic Posts”, in Mother Jones. From the entry neo-Nazi
  • The chatbot quickly spat out paragraphs of Kennedyesque text, including phrases like “my fellow Americans.”2025 June 2, Larry Cuban, “School Reform and Classroom Practice”, in Wordpress. From the entry Kennedyesque
  • "Nixonian" is a phrase in government that is almost never intended as a compliment.2025 February 4, Chris Brennan, “Chaos, lawsuits are the point: Trump expects Supreme Court to give him a free pass”, in USA Today…. From the entry Nixonian
  • The phrase has caught fire online and sparked conversation about why younger adults do this.2025 July 23, Erin Kayata, “What is the ‘Gen Z stare’?”, in Northeastern Global News, Northeastern University, archived from the original…. From the entry Gen Zer
  • Phrases like “wife-changing returns” make it clear who the room was built for.2025 April 16, Tove Anderson, “The Future of Finance Can’t Just Be a Rebrand of the Past”, in Tove Anderson, archived from the original on…. From the entry wife-changing

Meaning of phrase

  1. noun A short written or spoken expression.
  2. noun A word or, more commonly, a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence, always containing an expressed or implied head (the principal word or subgroup, with core importance) and often consisting of a head plus some other elaborating words.
  3. noun A small section of music in a larger piece.

Full definition of phrase

Questions about phrase in a sentence

How do you use phrase in a sentence?
Phrase is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I've made progress, but this is still, in Churchill's phrase, just "the end of the beginning."”
What is a short sentence with phrase?
“This sentence contains a nominal phrase.”
What does phrase mean?
Phrase means a short written or spoken expression.

Source and license

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