Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use possessive in a sentence

18 example sentences · adjective, noun

Possessive means of or pertaining to ownership or possession. Example: “He is very possessive of his car.”

Examples of possessive by meaning

adjectiveUnwilling to yield possession of.

  • He is very possessive of his car.

nounA word used to indicate the possessive case.

  • Take the rule about pronouns and possessives that Mr.2023 January 6, Geoffery Nunberg, “The Nation: Parts of Speech; The Bloody Crossroads of Grammar and Politics”, in The New York Times
  • The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all do the opposite, opting for ’s to mark a singular possessive and a simple apostrophe for plural possessive (Harrises’ and Walzes’).2024 October 8, Remy Tumin, “Is It Harris’ or Harris’s? Add a Walz, and It’s Even Trickier.”, in The New York Times

More sentences with possessive

  • "My", "its" and "his" are possessive adjectives.From the entry possessive adjective
  • The English possessive 's is an enclitic.From the entry enclitic
  • I had wanted an incalcitrant father, a possessive mother, a wild and violent argument.2019, Niall Williams, This is Happiness, Bloomsbury (2020), page 261. From the entry incalcitrant
  • He went out with her a couple of times and then she got possessive.”2014 January 31, Robert B Parker, Perish Twice, Oldcastle Books, →ISBN, page 73. From the entry snoot
  • I'm just a bit possessive of him, but don't get me wrong.2011, Dakota Priest, Thorns. From the entry don't get me wrong
  • Udmurt, Turkish, and Yucatec Mayan to test (and critique) the hypothesis that possessives grammaticalize into definite articles.2003, George Melville Bolling, Bernard Bloch, Language. From the entry grammaticalize
  • Why then has Chou En-lai suddenly shown this possessive interest in three remote Kachin villages?1956 December 29, Dorothy Woodman, “Three Burmese Villages”, in New Statesman and Nation, volume 52, number 1346, page 833. From the entry Tibetanisation
  • Then a possessive silence overfell the house, and I was unable to fall to sleep again.1929, Shane Leslie, A Ghost in the Isle of Wight, page 17. From the entry overfall
  • From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company…. From the entry dimity
  • Never thought Id see the day.” His father draped an equally as possessive arm around his wife and kissed her cheek.2016, Melissa Foster, chapter 13, in Rescued by Love (Love in Bloom: The Ryders), World Literary Press, →ISBN, page 155. From the entry girlfriending
  • Possessive pronouns are all apostropheless: my, your, his, hers, its.2013, Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax. From the entry apostropheless
  • "Yeah, possessive drinks are the worst." Will laughed.2013, JSB Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death, page 76. From the entry mis-apostrophize
  • Or used as verbs, or made plural or possessive.1991 July 1, “Trademarked for life”, in The Press Democrat, 134th year, number 253, Santa Rosa, Calif., →ISSN, →OCLC, page D1, column 1. From the entry kleenices
  • In the first season of Stranger Things, no character was more extra than Steve Harrington — Nancy Wheeler’s frequently possessive, largely confused, often douchey boyfriend.2017 November 7, Aja Romano, “The unlikely breakout star of Stranger Things 2 is unlikelier babysitter Steve Harrington”, in Vox. From the entry get with the program
  • In examples (81) and (82), the postpositive possessives do not occupy the peninitial position in the clause, nor the peninitial position of the NP.2009, Stéphanie J. Bakker, The Noun Phrase in Ancient Greek: A Functional Analysis of the Order and Articulation of NP Constituents in…. From the entry peninitial

Meaning of possessive

  1. adjective Of or pertaining to ownership or possession.
  2. adjective Indicating ownership, possession, origin, etc.
  3. adjective Unwilling to yield possession of.

Full definition of possessive

Questions about possessive in a sentence

How do you use possessive in a sentence?
Possessive is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “He is very possessive of his car.”
What is a short sentence with possessive?
“"My", "its" and "his" are possessive adjectives.”
What does possessive mean?
Possessive means of or pertaining to ownership or possession.

Source and license

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