Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use signify in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Signify means to create a sign out of something. Example: “Hercules is sometimes used appellatively, that is, as a common name, to signify a strong man.”

Examples of signify by meaning

verbTo show one’s intentions with a sign etc.; to indicate, announce, or portend.

  • “Do you want to write a cheque, Granny?” The old eyes signified assent.1952, Neville Shute, “Chapter Two”, in The Far Country, London: Heinemann

verbTo mean; to betoken.

  • Leaning over, she gives Uncle Oscar a furious affectionate pat which signifies that he is a good fellow and we all love him.1961, Walker Percy, “Chapter Four”, in The Moviegoer, New York: Avon, published 1980, page 143
  • A white one signifies Why are you fleeing me?1984, Julian Barnes, “Chapter 11”, in Flaubert’s Parrot, New York: Vintage, published 1990

More sentences with signify

  • Hercules is sometimes used appellatively, that is, as a common name, to signify a strong man.From the entry appellatively
  • Most of us have a favourite first that signifies the true beginning of spring.2018 April 27, Patrick Barkham, The Guardian. From the entry orange tip
  • The use of SMOrc and similar emotes requires, and signifies, membership in the Twitch Hearthstone community.2017, Colin Ford, Dan Gardner, Leah Elaine Horgan, Calvin Liu, a. m. tsaasan, Bonnie Nardi, Jordan Rickman, “Chat Speed OP PogChamp…. From the entry SMOrc
  • Tourists visit this place because of what it signifies, which is the secondspace.2016, Peter Claver Ajer, The Death of Jesus and the Politics of Place in the Gospel of John, →ISBN, page 66. From the entry secondspace
  • The filled boxes signify representation of the particular anthropobiome in each ecoregion.2015 August 1, “Modelling Hotspots for Invasive Alien Plants in India”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry anthropobiome
  • Sobornost signifies the essentially extrapersonal (supra-personal) and a-temporal nature of aesthetic consciousness.2007, Paul Haffner, Mystery of the Church, page 132. From the entry sobornost
  • Elhaz signifies the elk and the sedge plant, both noted for their ability to protect.2007, Christina Pratt, An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, volume 2, The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, →ISBN, page 403. From the entry Elhaz
  • What does this signify for the materiality and mentality of our everyday life in the hypermodern city?2003, Ryan Bishop, John Phillips, Wei-Wei Yeo, Postcolonial urbanism: Southeast Asian cities and global processes. From the entry hypermodern
  • The raised point (·) may signify English comma, semicolon, or colon.2001, James M. Efird, A Grammar for New Testament Greek, Wipf & Stock Publishers, page 5. From the entry raised point
  • The opening of GALAS in Boston signifies the first organized presentation of lesbian-created art in this city.1980 August 2, C. T. McKee, Marcia Geier, “The Great American Lesbian Art Show Comes To Boston”, in Gay Community News, page 10. From the entry sculptress
  • Empathy signifies exploring, reconnoitering, contemplating, estimating, judging, “feeling into,” but not “feeling with” the other person.1939 November, Eugen Kahn, Helen G. Richter, “Sensitivity”, in The American Journal of Psychiatry, volume 96. From the entry symphoria
  • As frequently used, Fascism signifies anything you want, as long as it is not openly favoring Communism.1936 October 10, John LaFarge, “Fascism or Communism: Which the Greater Danger?”, in America: A Catholic Review of the Week, volume LVI…. From the entry hellbrew
  • Ambrose, avers that the pard’s variety of hue signifies the various impulses of the soul.1902, Richard Thayer Holbrook, Dante and the Animal Kingdom. From the entry pard
  • Both names signify 'high' or 'big mountain.' The natives of the interior know it as Denali.1902, Dodd, Mead and Company, New International Encyclopedia. From the entry Denali
  • It signifies the relief of breathing in fresh air.[2021 December 15, Dr. Shilpa Aroskar, “Mastering The Mask”, in UBUNTU - I AM BECAUSE WE ARE: Parables of the United Human Spirit…. From the entry airgasm
  • He is tall, which often signifies strength in humans, but his form is thin and, to you, seems malnourished.2021, Dan Sheehan, I Am Not A Wolf, Andrews McMeel Publishing, page 5. From the entry indoorsmanship
  • In this layered qiné dynamic, the “wax” signifies the surface meaning while the “gold” indicates a deeper hidden insight.2021, Thera Mjaaland, Revolutionary Struggles and Girls’ Education: At the Frontiers of Gender Norms in North-Ethiopia, Rowman &…. From the entry qiné
  • Also, the NINA code, which did exist, did not signify a loan to a borrower with no income.2012 May, Christopher L. Foote, Kristopher S. Gerardi, Paul S. Willen, “Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The…. From the entry ninja loan
  • It commonly signifies the indigenous religion(s) of South Asia, now increasingly called by the Epic term Sanātana Dharma (eternal religion).2006, Encyclopedia of India, volume 2, page 188. From the entry epic
  • This harmony signifies not only survival, but love—indeed that it must be love that enables survival against such odds.2005, Wendy W. Walters, At Home In Diaspora: Black International Writing, page 119. From the entry many-tongued
  • In web page design, the fold signifies the place at which the user has to scroll down to get more information.1999, Jared M. Spool, Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide, Morgan Kaufmann, →ISBN, page 77. From the entry fold
  • Slumps and sediment gravity flow could signify steepening of the slope resulting from tectonic downbowing of the continental margin.1997, A. E. M. Nairn, A. S. Alsharhan, Sedimentary Basins and Petroleum Geology of the Middle East. From the entry downbow
  • The subordination of female to male signifies their shared sin.1973, Phyllis Trible, “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation”, in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, volume 41, number…. From the entry vitiate
  • What does signify, however, is the assumption that evangelical missions introduce or maintain an alien culture and that they denationalize.1933, John T. Tucker, Angola, the land of the blacksmith prince. From the entry denationalize
  • What signifies keeping the poor lassie in a swither?1910, Alfred Harmsworth Northcliffe, The World's Greatest Books, page 272. From the entry uphand
  • The people themselves prefer the name Nuxalk, a term that refers to the valley itself and signifies their inseparable relationship with their homeland.2025 September 9, “Discover the Nuxalk: History & Culture of a Pacific Coast Indigenous People”, in NationTalk. From the entry ItNuxalkmc
  • The bleeding body signifies as a shameful token of uncontrol, as a failure of physical self-mastery particularly associated with woman in her monthly "courses".2018, Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed, Cornell University, page 92. From the entry course
  • The first procedure would signify a process of successive subspeciations while the second one would mean simultaneous subspeciations, although this is not mandatory.2013, Eduardo H Rapoport, Areography: Geographical Strategies of Species, page 58. From the entry subspeciation
  • Given the identity Maistre posits between pope and church, papal omnipresence and omnicognizance signify the ecclesiastical suffusion of the world with reason.2011, Carolina Armenteros, “The Universal Reason of Ecclesiastical Authority”, in “A Europeanist Theory of History: Du pape”, in The…. From the entry omnicognizance
  • The palitza, or diamond-shaped epigonation, signifies the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and is a senior award of the priesthood.2010, Michael Prokurat, Michael D. Peterson, Alexander Golitzin, The A to Z of the Orthodox Church, Scarecrow Press, →ISBN, page 337. From the entry palitza
  • Like you, I have stumbled through life without knowing what an umlaut signifies and looked it up today only because language is my shtick.2001 April 22, William Safire, “Shtick”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry shtick
  • We tend to not use eye contact nearly as often; when we do, it often signifies that it's the other person's turn to speak now.1999 April 15, Cally Soukup, “Fannish Accent? Minicon panel (LONG)”, in rec.arts.sf.fandom (Usenet), message-ID…. From the entry mundania
  • The keyword ANY signifies that a blort can contain a mix of character data and any element declared in the DTD, in any sequence.1995, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Lou Burnard, “The Design of the TEI Encoding Scheme”, in Computers and the Humanities, volume 29, number 1…. From the entry blort
  • To administer a send off the referee must stop play and signify the action by showing the offending player a red card.1994, Michael L. LaBlanc, Richard Henshaw, The world encyclopedia of soccer, →ISBN, page 389. From the entry send off
  • Some people, viewing these verses from the human side, misconclude the words in Mark 16.17-18 to signify the things mentioned there to be quite extraordinary.1985, Watchman Nee, The Spirit of the Gospel, page 96. From the entry misconclude
  • It indicates that we find our personal existence from among an inter-relatedness; and it thereby signifies a giftful quality of Being as permeating our humanness.1981, Studies in Formative Spirituality - Volume 2. From the entry giftful
  • There is no such thing as 'chance', which term only signifies the mind's perplexity in the face of events that spring from multiple causes.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford…. From the entry perplexity

Meaning of signify

  1. verb To create a sign out of something.
  2. verb To give (something) a meaning or an importance.
  3. verb To show one’s intentions with a sign etc.; to indicate, announce, or portend.

Full definition of signify

Questions about signify in a sentence

How do you use signify in a sentence?
Signify is used as a verb. For example: “Hercules is sometimes used appellatively, that is, as a common name, to signify a strong man.”
What is a short sentence with signify?
“A white one signifies Why are you fleeing me?”
What does signify mean?
Signify means to create a sign out of something.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: signify (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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