Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

A “salon” of multiple smaller works introduced each section, enlarging on Mr. Whitney’s shift from gatherings of blunt, sometimes layered, rounded forms to the abutments of rectangles that have preoccupied him since the 1990s.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 25, 2025

The questions of what subjective experience is, who has it and how it relates to the physical world around us have preoccupied philosophers for most of recorded history.

From Scientific American • Sep. 8, 2023

In his long life there is much to gossip about, and the biography avoids most of the sordid details that might have preoccupied a less serious biographer.

From Washington Post • Apr. 11, 2023

Another task for Musk: delivering on his promise to clean up the fake profiles, or “spam bots” that have preoccupied him and bedeviled Twitter since long before he expressed interest in acquiring it.

From Seattle Times • Oct. 28, 2022

If her feet had been less childishly small, they might have preoccupied him less.

From A Man's Hearth by Ingram, Eleanor M. (Eleanor Marie)