Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unpredictable in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Unpredictable means unable to be predicted. Example: “English spelling is often regarded as confusing and unpredictable due to the mongrel nature of that language.”

Examples of unpredictable by meaning

adjectiveUnable to be predicted.

  • It has, therefore, always been a major problem for South African railways to cater adequately for this unpredictable city; three stations have had to be built on the present site during the last fifty years.1958 September, C. Alan Cook, “Johannesburg's Fourth Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 639
  • Sharks are not unpredictable; for the most part, they do exactly what an apex predator is expected to do.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 146

nounAn unpredictable thing.

  • Other unpredictables, like the recent unexpected blizzards and those of 2 years ago, or a hurricane can cost us many thousands of dollars, and have a severe impact on equipment and facilities.1960, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Motor Vehicle...

More sentences with unpredictable

  • English spelling is often regarded as confusing and unpredictable due to the mongrel nature of that language.From the entry mongrel
  • I have always been on the receiving end of his unpredictable temper.From the entry on the receiving end
  • Known for his innovative and unpredictable strokeplay, Dhoni had dead-batted this doosra straight back to the bowler.2022, Amit Sinha, Joy Bhattacharjya, Do Different: The Untold Dhoni. From the entry dead bat
  • In datamoshed works, time seems to stall, streak or speed ahead in unpredictable ways.2017, Allan Cameron, “Facing the Glitch: Abstraction, Abjection and the Digital Image”, in Beugnet Martine Beugnet, editor, Indefinite…. From the entry datamosh
  • An important attribute of technical debt is that it grows in an unpredictable, nonlinear fashion.2012, Kenneth S. Rubin, Essential Scrum, Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, page 142. From the entry technical debt
  • As for the unpredictable Uzbek commander Dostum, Rasheed said no one knew where he would stand.2007, Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING (2018), page 224. From the entry Uzbek
  • Ut's slippery, semi-improvised antirock was shrill and swampy, an unpredictable amalgam of loose strumming and phantom sputtering.2006 November 10, Jessica Hopper, “Ten Under the Radar”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry antirock
  • The conclusion was that Mr Shakoor had experienced a rare and unpredictable idiosyncratic reaction to them.2001, Margaret Fordham, “The Standard of Care Applicable to Practitioners of Alternative Medicine: Shakoor v Situ”, in Singapore Journal…. From the entry idiosyncratic reaction
  • Entire settlementation at risk due to unequal and unpredictable time limit for land subsidence.1996, Nagarlok - Volume 28, page 30. From the entry settlementation
  • In a privatized world, government becomes “diffuse, unstable, unpredictable,” and the skein of responsibility more and more attenuated.2025 June 3, Cullen Murphy, “Feudalism Is Our Future: What the next Dark Ages could look like”, in The Atlantic. From the entry sub
  • When my mother learned that she would finally be realizing her dream of becoming a grandmother, her reaction was not unpredictable.2021 May 6, Emma John, chapter 7, in Self Contained: Scenes from a Single Life, London: Cassell, →ISBN. From the entry grandfoetus
  • But to embed oneself in an irregular and unpredictable food supply as mycelium does, one must be able to shapeshift.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 57. From the entry shapeshift
  • The sneaker release calendar is unpredictable like the weather.2020 July 2, Fabian Gorsler, “This Week's Sneaker Weather Forecast Gets Hot & Sweaty”, in Highsnobiety, archived from the original on 29…. From the entry heat
  • Despite this unpredictable decision, she still showed me her support and guided me to complete my Master’s degree.2018, Javier Sánchez Pozo, TIMP-2 Phosphorylation by Extracellular c-SRC Regulates proMMP-2 Activation, State University of New York…. From the entry master out
  • Brilliant young aspiring Microsofters queue in two lines to fire a series of fantastically unpredictable questions at Nadella.2017 September 30, Ben Hoyle, “Satya Nadella: the man who rebooted Microsoft”, in The Times. From the entry Microsofter
  • In this section I describe edge control as a phenomenon associated with the contingent (or unpredictable) nature of police-citizen interactions.2014, John P. Crank, Understanding Police Culture, page 174. From the entry edge control
  • Murray himself has become the folkloric equivalent of a leprechaun or fairy godparent, popping up at unpredictable yet opportune moments.2012 November 28, Dave Itzkoff, “With Bill Murray, Just Take the Trip”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company…. From the entry fairy godparent
  • Vomiting is unavoidable, violent, and sometimes unpredictable.2011 September 26, Michelle Clement, “My experience with emetophobia, and some questions for the blogosphere”, in Scientific American. From the entry emetophobe
  • Missouri does not employ fullcourt pressure all the time, but it uses varying defensive schemes to remain unpredictable.2009 March 26, Thayer Evans, “Missouri Thrives on Running Opponents Ragged”, in New York Times. From the entry fullcourt
  • Loonies are always good material; they're so unpredictable, so genuine.1997, Martin Harry Greenberg, Vampires: The Greatest Stories, →ISBN, page 236. From the entry quadrillionaire
  • She parked the car on Rogers Avenue, which she called "Sesame Street," "for the unpredictable theatrics of its inhabitants."1996, Laurie Gunst, Born Fi' Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican Posse Underworld, page 171. From the entry Sesame Street
  • The connections between boats are tangled and unpredictable.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 322. From the entry all over the place
  • High Risk is an anthology of unpredictable, politically unportrayable dualities.1991 May 4, Mary Dowd, “Risky Business”, in Gay Community News, page 9. From the entry unportrayable
  • Nevertheless, even for a country bank, the unpredictable can loom large in the management of its reserve position.1980, Howard D. Crosse, George H. Hempel, Management Policies for Commercial Banks, page 174. From the entry loom large
  • The stony outcrops are often covered but thinly with arable soil; winters are bitingly cold, and rainfall scanty and unpredictable.1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 49. From the entry but
  • Goofballs usually produce a quiet drowsiness, but also at times a tense aggressiveness that can be frighteningly unpredictable.1965 February 26, James Mills, “The World of Needle Park”, in Time, volume 58, number 8, page 82. From the entry GB
  • The singer had an electrifying and unpredictable onstage presence and a dry sense of humor that endeared him to hordes of adoring fans.2025 July 22, Kory Grow, “Ozzy Osbourne obituary: The Godfather of Heavy Metal who changed the world”, in Rolling Stone. From the entry electrifying
  • Pele remained a powerful goddess in the eyes of native Hawaiians because of her ongoing unpredictable eruptions that both created and destroyed.2021, David Seal, Sharon K. Smith, World Mythology, Wipf and Stock, page 190. From the entry Pele
  • The philobatic environment consists of friendly spaces littered with unpredictable objects; the ocnophilic world consists of objects 'separated by horrid empty spaces'.2017, Lynda Nead, The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-War Britain, New Haven, C.T.; London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page…. From the entry ocnophilic
  • Her performances on this tour have been affirming but unpredictable, and the Lovatics — the name for her throngs of fans — totally relate.2011 November 23, Kent Szlauderbach, “Teenage Dream”, in The Pitch, volume 31, number 20, page 17. From the entry Lovatic
  • The consequences of reverting a good-faith edit with a vandalism-reversion tool or "rvv" edit summary are unpredictable, and unlikely to win you friends or trust.2008, PaulHammond, “The Laws of Unintended Consequences”, in talk.religion.bahai (Usenet), retrieved 12 Aug 2018. From the entry rvv
  • Only six teams from nonpower conferences received at-large bids, a surprising development in one of the more unpredictable N.C.A.A. tournament unveilings in recent years.2007 March 12, Pete Thamel, “Midmajors Are Pushed Aside by Power Conferences”, in New York Times. From the entry nonpower
  • In the clinical practice, citric acid therapy has some problems, including its taste, large volume to drink, need for hospitalisation, and unpredictable litholytic effect.2007, William C. Langley, Pancreatitis Research Advances, →ISBN, page 265. From the entry litholytic
  • The Missouri, that grand, sprawling, unpredictable serpent has been sideboarded and tamed, its occasional venom squeezed for the foreseeable future from its muddy fangs.2004, The North Dakota Quarterly - Volume 71, Issues 1-2, page 67. From the entry sideboard
  • Because the results of a shape tween can be unpredictable, you can set shape hints to let Flash know how to proceed with the tween.2004, Andy Anderson, Mark Del Lima, Steve Johnson, Show Me Macromedia Flash MX 2004, page 237. From the entry tween
  • Subjectively we perceive this as a single, unpredictable or ‘random’ outcome, though from the multiverse point of view all the outcomes have actually happened.1998 [1997], David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality, New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 202. From the entry parallel universe
  • Parties given by the flamboyant rancher from Texas had been more crowded, more informal, more unpredictable, more lavish in the buffet, and more kissingly cordial.1993, Betty Beale, Power at Play, page 165. From the entry kissingly

Meaning of unpredictable

  1. adjective Unable to be predicted.
  2. noun An unpredictable thing.

Full definition of unpredictable

Questions about unpredictable in a sentence

How do you use unpredictable in a sentence?
Unpredictable is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “English spelling is often regarded as confusing and unpredictable due to the mongrel nature of that language.”
What is a short sentence with unpredictable?
“Vomiting is unavoidable, violent, and sometimes unpredictable.”
What does unpredictable mean?
Unpredictable means unable to be predicted.

Source and license

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