How to use tentative in a sentence
32 example sentences · noun, adjective
Tentative means a trial; an experiment; an attempt. Example: “He gave a tentative answer, unsure of the final outcome.”
Examples of tentative by meaning
adjectiveUncertain; subject to future change.
- He gave a tentative answer, unsure of the final outcome.
- We have a tentative plan for the weekend, but nothing is confirmed yet.
- Meanwhile, a bunch of hungry directors with digital cameras, time on their hands and not much money are making free-form studies about tentative hookups and long conversations among actual, overeducated, undermotivated young folks.2009 May 3, Manohla Dargis, A. O. Scott, “Memos to Hollywood”, in The New York Times
adjectiveRestrained; polite; feeling one's way, not using full force.
- Her tentative steps showed her nervousness as she entered the room.
More sentences with tentative
- If you're over tentative then you'll get nowhere.From the entry over
- As the humans establish tentative bonds with their evolutionary cousins, the inter-species waters start to muddy.2014 July 1, Steve Rose, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: a primate scream – first look review”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian…. From the entry muddy
- By around 2.3 million years ago, the first tentative record emerges of a new species, a habiline.2009, Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Basic Books, page 4. From the entry habiline
- The nausea abated some, enough for her to take a few tentative sporkfuls of curry.2006 August, Mark Budz, chapter 14, in Idolon, Bantam Spectra, page 103. From the entry sporkful
- Bearing a bottle of wine and a pair of long-stemmed glasses, and a tentative expression.2006 July, Elizabeth Bear [pseudonym; Sarah Kindred], Blood and Iron (The Promethean Age; 1), New York, N.Y.: Roc, →ISBN, page 246. From the entry devil take the hindmost
- Nevertheless, I offer a tentative description of the representation of “race” and “blacks” in genre film.2003, Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader III - Volume 3, →ISBN, page 472. From the entry genre film
- A tentative violoncello is playing, invisible and plaintive, then stops with an asthmatic scrape of catgut.2002, Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White, Canongate Books (2010), page 110. From the entry violoncello
- Crazy Fingers seems to highlight Jerry's ability to come in late and tentative on lyrics.1989 June 29, Neil McAvoy [Wing Attack Plan R], rec.music.gdead (Usenet). From the entry flame
- We also give a polynomial-time decidable sufficient condition for a tentative match to be finalizable in the general case.2016, Hisao Tamaki, “Finalizing tentative matches from truncated preference lists”, in arXiv. From the entry finalizable
- "I actually kind of want the painal." "Kind of want it ?" He repeated her tentative words, wondering at her bravado.2016 June 28, Molly Joseph, Annabel Joseph, Diva, volume 2, Scarlet Rose Press. From the entry painal
- Piñeiro is an observer of love’s laziness, of the tentative, noncommittal expressions of desire among underemployed, overcultured urbanites.2015 June 25, A. O. Scott, “Review: Shakespeare and Love Cuddle Up in ‘The Princess of France’”, in New York Times. From the entry overcultured
- Reluctantly she took the rolled flatcake, but waited until he had begun eating his before taking her first tentative bite.2012, Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt, The Garlic Ballads. From the entry flatcake
- She'd hop around, resniff the smell from different angles, then take a tentative swipe at it, upending a dollop of turf.2010, Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, →ISBN. From the entry resniff
- Editor’s note: Five special municipalities are Taipei City, Hsinpei (Xinbei) City (two tentative transliterations), Taichung City, Tainan City, and Kaohsiung City.2009 October 6, “Blue Camp Needs to Overcome Crisis in Six Local Elections”, in Kuomintang Official Website, archived from the original on…. From the entry Hsinpei
- What they produced was in fact limited; they acknowledged that their work was both tentative and only a groundplan.2003, Penny Thompson, Whatever Happened to Religious Education?, →ISBN, page 71. From the entry groundplan
- He may be about 24 years old (tentative).1977, Jan Ate van Ek, L. G. Alexander, The Threshold Level for Modern Language Learning in Schools (page 159). From the entry unpositive
- Our answer is a tentative "sort-of"..2016, Jesse C. McKeown, “Complex Cobordism vs. Representing Formal Group Laws”, in arXiv. From the entry loopspace
- Police condem opponents, readily confuse arbitrary, tentative political law with moral good, and `shieldedly' pursue to suffer others as if they are only loving others.2000 July 25, Nomen Nescio, “Conservative or Liberal”, in alt.christnet.theology (Usenet). From the entry shieldedly
- Those lovers, played by Vincent Perez and Rachel Weisz, are certainly easy on the eyes, but their romantic chemistry is tentative at best.1998 Jan. 23, Stephen Holden, "Ukrainian Patient: A Romance In the Rain" (film review of Swept from the Sea), New York Times (retrieved 2…. From the entry easy on the eyes
- The tentative deal announced this week by the Writers Guild of America includes many industry-specific aspects, such as the size of writers’ rooms and improved residuals for streaming.2023 September 29, Adam Seth Litwin, “Want to Save Your Job From A.I.? Hollywood Screenwriters Just Showed You How.”, in The New York…. From the entry residual
- Derrida gives a rather tentative beginning of an answer: The unfolding of difference is perhaps not solely the truth of Being, or of the epochality of Being.2016, James Luchte, Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy - Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy, Bloosbury Publishing…. From the entry epochality
- On an average" blends the meanings of "say" as "let us suppose"—a tentative hypothesis—and "say" as "approximately"—a gesture of rough measurement that is promptly vaguened to "an average".2015 winter, Graham Fraser, “‘Haze Sole Certitude’: Beckett’s Late Vaguenings”, in Journal of Modern Literature, volume 38, number 2…. From the entry vaguen
- At first, she was tentative to step into the ring, but to this day she continues to learn the ropes and develop into an exciting and skilled performer.2009 March 9, “Maria Kanellis: The Greek WWE Diva”, in Greek Reporter, archived from the original on 13 Jul 2017. From the entry learn the ropes
- OOC talk and actions are taken to represent the player hirself and help other players to form an image, however tentative it may be, of that player.2002, Frank Schaap, The Words That Took Us There: Ethnography in a Virtual Reality, Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, →ISBN, →OL…. From the entry hirself
- This was beauty, the gaslit room, the warmth, the food, the tabooless conversation, the hush into which the most tentative thoughts could advance, and receive confidence and strength.1991, Niall Quinn, The Café Cong. From the entry tabooless
- Only at a blotch of sunlight did it hesitate, tentative as a leaf-flicker on the whitewashed plaster, then moment by long moment it seeped in darkeningly.1962, Rudy Wiebe, Peace Shall Destroy Many. From the entry darkeningly
- The L.M.R. is building up this new district organisation to ensure on-the-spot attention to the Marylebone suburban services, of which dieselisation with multiple-units has made a tentative beginning.1961 May, “Talking of Trains: E.R. Man for Marylebone”, in Trains Illustrated, page 259. From the entry on-the-spot
- Particularly when etymologies are encountered in the compressed form found in many dictionaries, they can seem to be a given, rather than the (often very tentative) results of extensive research.2011 [2009], Philip Durkin, “About this book”, in The Oxford Guide to Etymology, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page ix. From the entry etymology
Meaning of tentative
- noun A trial; an experiment; an attempt.
- noun A schedule for an event or a programme.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a trial or trials; essaying; experimental.
Questions about tentative in a sentence
- How do you use tentative in a sentence?
- Tentative is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “He gave a tentative answer, unsure of the final outcome.”
- What is a short sentence with tentative?
- “Our answer is a tentative "sort-of"..”
- What does tentative mean?
- Tentative means a trial; an experiment; an attempt.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tentative (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 tentative in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/tentative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
