Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use proportional in a sentence

37 example sentences · adjective, noun

Proportional means at a constant ratio (to). Two magnitudes (numbers) are said to be proportional if the second varies in a direct relation arithmetically to the first. Symbol: ∝. Example: “A semicubical parabola is a curve in which the ordinates are proportional to the square roots of the cubes of the abscissas.”

Examples of proportional by meaning

adjectiveAt a constant ratio (to). Two magnitudes (numbers) are said to be proportional if the second varies in a direct...

  • A vacuum-controlled straight air brake system is fitted, in which the driver's vacuum brake valve applies the train brake and makes a proportional application of the locomotive air brake.1958 September, “Swindon's First Main-Line Diesel Locomotive”, in Railway Magazine, page 603

adjectiveIn proportion (to), proportionate.

  • This ensures consistency across your website design so that you don't end up with elements that are not adequately proportional with each other.2014, Aravind Shenoy, Learning Bootstrap

adjectiveOf a typeface, having characters with natural (non-uniform) width (in contrast to monospace typefaces).

  • A font is proportional if all characters in the font have different widths due to their various sizes.2013, Eric A. Meyer, CSS Fonts: Web Typography Possibilities, page 2

More sentences with proportional

  • A semicubical parabola is a curve in which the ordinates are proportional to the square roots of the cubes of the abscissas.From the entry semicubical
  • Last year the Labour Party passed a conference motion backing proportional representation (PR) by an overwhelming margin.2023 July 21, Rob Ford, “Would proportional representation really doom the Tories?”, in New Statesman. From the entry pr
  • You should satisfy yourself that both of these ratios are proportional to time.2015, William M. White, Isotope Geochemistry, Wiley, page 78. From the entry concordia diagram
  • The maliciousness of this gossip is directly proportional to the distance from the casket and the bereaved.2011, Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, Jonathan Cape, page 252. From the entry maliciousness
  • The court held that “proportional airtime” had to be given to protobacco and antitobacco advertising.2010, Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies, Fourth Estate (2011), page 266. From the entry antitobacco
  • Yet in repeated experiments, subjects have cast aside equalism in favor of proportional treatment of defendants.2001, Norman J. Finkel, Commonsense Justice, →ISBN, page 335. From the entry equalism
  • It has been sharply criticized for being the “less proportional method.”1999, Pietro Grilli di Cortona et al., Evaluation and Optimization of Electoral Systems, SIAM, →ISBN, page 103. From the entry D'Hondt method
  • The Kaplan-Meier method, log-rank testing, and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to analyze the associations between immunosignals and outcome.2015 July 22, “Tumor-Associated Macrophages Provide Significant Prognostic Information in Urothelial Bladder Cancer”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry immunosignals
  • Often, scheduling methods would simply cost a shift by its spreadover since actual wage cost is usually proportional to spreadover.2004, Joseph Y-T. Leung, Handbook of Scheduling. From the entry spreadover
  • However, MULTOPS assumes that packet rates between two hosts are proportional and the IP addresses are not spoofed.2003, Tao Peng, Christopher Leckie, Kotagiri Ramamohanarao, “Detecting Distributed Denial of Service Attacks by Sharing Distributed…. From the entry spoof
  • The achievable frequency stability is proportional to the monochromaticity (or Q) of the absorption, so optical clocks promise better standards.2001 November 23, Patrick Gill, “ATOMIC CLOCKS: Raising the Standards”, in Science, volume 294, number 5547, →DOI, pages 1666–1668. From the entry monochromaticity
  • We have seen that under any reasonable definition of area, the angular defect of a triangle is proportional to its area.1995, Arlan Ramsay, Robert D. Richtmyer, Introduction to Hyperbolic Geometry, page 120. From the entry angular defect
  • Similitude applies to proportional changes, such as doublings, halvings, or quarterings; it does not apply to additive changes.1994, David C. Schneider, Quantitative Ecology: Spatial and Temporal Scaling, page 36. From the entry doubling
  • The Gibbs phenomenon is characteristic of Fourier series at a discontinuity, its size being proportional to the magnitude of the discontinuity.1974, K. F. Riley, Mathematical Methods for the Physical Sciences, Cambridge University Press, page 197. From the entry Gibbs phenomenon
  • The photronic cell is an oxide cell and produces a small electromotive force which is proportional to the light intensity.1937, Rolla Roy Ramsey, Experimental Radio, page 169. From the entry photronic
  • The mass of liquid transported through a porous diaphragm in a given time is directly proportional to the current.1921, Wilder Dwight Bancroft, Applied Colloid Chemistry: General Theory, page 207. From the entry diaphragm
  • The number of transaction validations allowed for a staker is directly proportional to the amount and duration of their assets on stake.2020, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Ali Dehghantanha, Reza M. Parizi, editors, Blockchain Cybersecurity, Trust and Privacy, Springer Nature…. From the entry staker
  • In the image, they have been distinguished by assigning a grayscale brightness to each feature that is proportional to a shape descriptor, the formfactor.2017, John C. Russ, J. Christian Russ, Introduction to Image Processing and Analysis, page 287. From the entry formfactor
  • The corresponding leading order entropy of the nonsuperradiant modes is found to be proportional to the area of the horizon and is logarithmically divergent.2016, Kaushik Ghosh, “Near-Horizon Geometry and the Entropy of a Minimally Coupled Scalar Field in the Kerr Black Hole”, in arXiv. From the entry nonsuperradiant
  • Each month, 10 household clusters (i.e. subvillages) were selected, with the probability of selection being proportional to the population size in the district.2015 April 22, Ulrika Baker et al., “Identifying implementation bottlenecks for maternal and newborn health interventions in rural…. From the entry subvillages
  • For instance, in the case of Parma hams, the amount of salt to be added is proportional to the weight of the ham.2010, Fidel Toldrá, M. Concepción Aristoy, “Chapter 20: Dry-Cured Ham”, in Fidel Toldrá, editor, Handbook of Meat Processing, Wiley…. From the entry Parma ham
  • The single most common proportional mistake in both compositry and fine art portraits is making the nose too long in relation to the face drawn.2007, Lois Gibson, Forensic Art Essentials: A Manual for Law Enforcement Artists, →ISBN, page 41. From the entry compositry
  • The velocitization differs from equilibrium gradients in that molecules are pelleted at a rate proportional to their size and largeley independent of conformation.1996, David M. Hillis, Craig Moritz, Barbara K. Mable, Molecular Systematics, page 283. From the entry velocitization
  • Simplifying of information at inner central area stations is thus aimworthy since the demand for information from staff is inversely proportional to simplicity.1975, Chartered Institute of Transport: Journal: Volumes 37-38. From the entry inversely
  • The angular diameter of this halo is inversely proportional to the diameter of the blood cell and it is this which the halometer measures.1949, J. W. D. Megaw, The Indian Medical Gazette - Volume 84, page 312. From the entry halometer
  • The proportional parts are then found by reducing the alligate parts to the same denominator , dropping the denominators and writing the numerators .1938, Joseph A. Zappa, Civil Service Manual: Mental Tests for Federal Examinations, page 94. From the entry alligate
  • The travel of the timewheel is directly proportional to the distance traversed by the ship, quite independently of the direction in which the timewheel travels.1905 June, “The Deadreckoner”, in Steamship and Other Power Vessels, volume 16, number 192, page 460. From the entry timewheel
  • Since oversampling entails collecting additional phase-encoding steps and the acquisition time is proportional to the number of phase-encoding steps, the use of oversampling increases the acquisition time.2012, William E. Brant, Eduard E. de Lange, Essentials of Body MRI, page 62. From the entry acquisition time
  • Van der Waals (vdW) forces were added semiempirically to the dispersion energy as a contribution proportional to R –6 (where R is the atomic distance) ( 28 ).2009 August 28, Leo Gross et al., “The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy”, in Science, volume 325…. From the entry semiempirically
  • Commercial use of these machines was enhanced by the development of a system of proportional measurements and subsequently of proportional sizes, making feasible ready-made clothing on a mass scale.2000, Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, page 75. From the entry ready-made
  • Finally, instead of returning to Chile’s traditional proportional representation system, the law adopted the “binomial” system, which gave strong incentives to the parties to form broad coalitions.1992, Rhoda Rabkin, “The Aylwin Government and ‘Tutelary’ Democracy: A Concept in Search of a Case?”, in Journal of Interamerican Studies…. From the entry binomial
  • A comparison of Silurian dolomite aquifer water-level hydrographs and pumpage graphs indicates that in general water-level decline is directly proportional to pumpage and suggests that recharge balances discharge.1962, Arthur John Zeizel, Ground-water resources of Du Page County, Illinois. From the entry hydrograph
  • If symptoms are directly proportional to the degree of hypoglycemia, ketonemias or a combination of the two, this animal would logically be expected to show pronounced symptoms.1947, Donald Edward Jasper, Hepatic Changes in the Bovine During Pregnancy and Ketosis. From the entry ketonemia
  • Since the resistance of the channel is inversely proportional to its width, the most resistive region is the one pinched between the gates where they come closest to each other.2012, Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, Physics of Nanostructured Solid State Devices, →ISBN, page 446. From the entry pinch

Meaning of proportional

  1. adjective At a constant ratio (to). Two magnitudes (numbers) are said to be proportional if the second varies in a direct relation arithmetically to the first. Symbol: ∝.
  2. adjective In proportion (to), proportionate.
  3. adjective Of a typeface, having characters with natural (non-uniform) width (in contrast to monospace typefaces).

Full definition of proportional

Questions about proportional in a sentence

How do you use proportional in a sentence?
Proportional is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “A semicubical parabola is a curve in which the ordinates are proportional to the square roots of the cubes of the abscissas.”
What is a short sentence with proportional?
“It has been sharply criticized for being the “less proportional method.””
What does proportional mean?
Proportional means at a constant ratio (to). Two magnitudes (numbers) are said to be proportional if the second varies in a direct relation arithmetically to the first. Symbol: ∝.

Source and license

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