Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use problematic in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Problematic means difficult to overcome, solve, or decide. Example: “It is well established that this methodology is problematic.”

Examples of problematic by meaning

adjectiveDifficult to overcome, solve, or decide.

  • And the most problematic thing of all is that it is impossible for me even to know and tell you their names, unless one of them happens to be a playwright.1993, Plato, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant, “Justice and Duty (i): Socrates Speaks at his Trial: the Apology”, in The...
  • However, estimating what consumers will pay in the future is problematic.2010, The Future of Energy Use
  • The station is blessed with a cafe and staff accommodation, as it's an important crew changeover point, although this can be problematic when services are late.2022 November 30, Paul Bigland, “Destination Oban: a Sunday in Scotland”, in RAIL, number 971, page 79

adjectiveNot settled, uncertain, of uncertain outcome; debatable, questionable, open to doubt.

  • a problematic analysis
  • it portends a problematic future for the movement
  • It was this strangeness that raised the topic of domestic service as a question and made problematic what had previously been taken for granted.1992, Mary Romero, “Intersection of Biography and History: My Intellectual Journey”, in Maid in the U.S.A., Routledge, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 1

nounA problem or difficulty in a particular field of study.

  • The seemingly intractable problematic of essentialism versus antiessentialism and primordialism versus circumstantialism endemic to identity analysis today.2006, Matt Wray, Not Quite White, page 141

More sentences with problematic

  • It is well established that this methodology is problematic.From the entry well-established
  • If a company takes data from proprietary technology, the practice may be legally problematic.2025 January 29, Cade Metz, “OpenAI Says DeepSeek May Have Improperly Harvested Its Data”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry distillation
  • The metric of objects only “sparking joy” is deeply problematic when applied to books.2019 January 7, Anakana Schofield, “What we gain from keeping books – and why it doesn’t need to be ‘joy’”, in The Guardian. From the entry KonMari
  • This is an unusual election with very strong anti-establishment subcurrents, making predictions problematic.2015 November 7, “And the 2016 Nominees May Be . . .”, in New York Times. From the entry subcurrent
  • I think it screws up skin tautness and makes dieting in the future problematic.2014 March, BrickHead, T NATION. From the entry permabulk
  • Sakers and Luggers are known to be problematic, and easy to lose, or to lose patience with.2013, Conor Mark Jameson, “Prologue”, in Silent Spring Revisted, London: Bloomsbury Wildlife, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 11. From the entry lugger
  • The discourse of a Shi'ite Crescent and the consequent “Shiaphobia” seem problematic for a number of reasons.2013, Glen Perry, The International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East, page 161. From the entry Shiaphobia
  • Collection of urine specimens from young children can also be problematic.2012 December 31, DB Barr, B Buckley, “Collection and Preparation of Human Biological Specimens for Contaminant Analysis”, in Heather…. From the entry diaper insert
  • This concept of "change as homogonous variation” is arguably the most profound and most problematic for Plato.2011, Jiayan Zhang, One and Many, page 35. From the entry homogonous
  • Padavan said, adding that he would support a payroll tax but saw bridge tolls as problematic.2009 April 13, William Neuman, “M.T.A. Rescue Plan May Hinge on Highway Spending, and Republican Support”, in New York Times. From the entry premeditatively
  • In the Netherlands, the most problematic agricultural waste is liquid pig manure or pig slurry.2004, W. H. Rulkens, “11: Overview of resource recovery techmologies for biowaste”, in Piet Lens, B. Hamelers, Harry Hoitink, Werner…. From the entry slurry
  • This makes the estimation of the refractive index of the turbid liquid quite problematic.2004, Jukka A. Räty, Kai-Erik Peiponen, Toshimitsu Asakura, UV-Visible Reflection Spectroscopy of Liquids, →ISBN, page 30. From the entry turbid
  • The title word of parashas Beha'alosekha (when you raise) is problematic.2004 October 13, Micha Berger, “Simple questions (yah, right)”, in soc.culture.jewish.moderated (Usenet). From the entry D'var Torah
  • This interpretation is problematic because it involves a temporal impossibility:⁷⁶ the inversion of time sequence.2002, Nannó Marinatos, The Goddess and the Warrior, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 65. From the entry Chrysaor
  • In the same way, homosexuality and bisexuality will always be seen as problematic in heteronormative organizations.1998, Ruth Holliday, “Philadelphia: AIDS, Organization, Representation”, in John Hassard, Ruth Holliday, editors…. From the entry heteronormative
  • Particles have always been a problematic and usually neglected area within the linguistic landscape.1996, Betty Devriendt, Louis Goossens, Johan van der Auwera, editors, Complex Structures: A Functionalist Perspective, Berlin: Walter de…. From the entry linguistic landscape
  • As I will present it, the first moment identifies the problematics of reading what was deemed vulgar.1994, Graven Images: A Journal of Culture, Law, and the Sacred, page 176. From the entry antiquitization
  • The problematic notion in all of this is that of antidevelopment forces working in concert.1988 September 16, Michael Miner, “"Politics of Poverty": Why Did John McCarron Do That?”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry antidevelopment
  • Blasco Ferrer's methodology, like his conclusions, are deeply problematic.2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 19. From the entry Benennungsmotiv
  • But it was not well understood or seen as especially problematic by the companies that owned the data.2023 July 15, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, “‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I.”, in The New York…. From the entry scraping
  • Although I'm not sure how you erg properly at this stage, Pulling into the sternum would be problematic.2022, Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry, page 187. From the entry erg
  • The centurion’s name is problematic, as there appears to be a dot separating the ‘M’ and ‘A’ following the century designation.2020, Matthew Dillon, Christopher Matthew, The Roman Republic (Religion & Classical Warfare), Pen & Sword Military, →ISBN. From the entry praenominal
  • Less problematic would be the case in which the same difficult endeavor unearthed not 14 but only 2 cases of nondeforestation.2019, Lourdes Arizpe, M. Priscilla Stone, David Major, Population and Environment: Rethinking the Debate. From the entry nondeforestation
  • This abomination, which stands for "Daddy Dom Little Girl" is essentially pedophilia-lite and is super uncomfortable, abusive, and wildly problematic.2018 May 7, Rebecca Goldstein, “DDLG Ruins the Party Again”, in Binghamton Review, Binghamton Review, page 13. From the entry kinkshame
  • Twenty-two eponymous and toponymous diseases were paired with their medically-descriptive synonym(s) and placed into two groups: neutral and problematic.2018, Christina Kazzi, Sarah White, Mark Butlin, “Changes in the use of eponyms and toponyms to name diseases. Abstract presented at…. From the entry toponymous
  • The loss of last year’s leading sacker, Kerry Hyder Jr., for the season with an Achilles injury is still problematic.2017 August 26, Bob Wojnowski, “Wojo: Patriots hand Lions cold glimpse of reality”, in The Detroit News. From the entry sacker
  • While the authenticity of various voices remains problematic, it was clear to me that she needed to and could voice herself.2012, Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, Sariya Contractor, Muslim Women in Britain: De-mystifying the Muslimah, page 35. From the entry misvoice
  • Another difficulty with this approach is that it embodies essentially the Cinquean conception that proved problematic in section 5.3.2.2008, Marcin Morzycki, “Nonrestrictive modifiers in non-parenthetical positions”, in Louise McNally, Christopher Kennedy, editors…. From the entry Cinquean
  • Second, incomplete coding is especially problematic for chronic conditions.2005, Daniel J. Friedman, Edward L. Hunter, R. Gibson Parrish, Health Statistics, →ISBN. From the entry undercode
  • "Every time things become problematic we start careering towards social causes and pick on a folk devil to attribute all evil."1996 December 18, Robert Verkaik, “‘Crash’ tackling”, in The Independent (UK), retrieved 08 Jun 2014. From the entry folk devil
  • They are, therefore, Künstlerromane of a particularly problematic kind: most of each text consists of the argument of its own impossibility.1981, Naomi Segal, Bithell Series of Dissertations, volume 6: “The Banal Object: Theme and Thematics in Proust, Rilke, Hofmannsthal, and…. From the entry Künstlerromane
  • This particular use of the time candle, however, is problematic.1928, “How Hamilton Watch Uses The Historical Display”, in Advertising & Selling, volume 12, page 69. From the entry time candle
  • 'Despite the prominence of the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark, MMLU scores reported by model creators are frequently produced in inconsistent or problematic ways'2024 May 1, Yifan Mai and Percy Liang, Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) on HELM, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2024. From the entry MMLU

Meaning of problematic

  1. adjective Difficult to overcome, solve, or decide.
  2. adjective Not settled, uncertain, of uncertain outcome; debatable, questionable, open to doubt.
  3. adjective Contributing (especially if subtly) to discrimination (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or ageism).

Full definition of problematic

Questions about problematic in a sentence

How do you use problematic in a sentence?
Problematic is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “It is well established that this methodology is problematic.”
What is a short sentence with problematic?
“a problematic analysis”
What does problematic mean?
Problematic means difficult to overcome, solve, or decide.

Source and license

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