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.

With some animals the successive variations may have supervened at a very early period of life, or the steps may have been inherited at an earlier age than that at which they first occurred.

From The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, 6th Edition by Darwin, Charles

Rigidity and contraction would have supervened of course, but only after life was extinct and consciousness fled.

From The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Harte, Bret

He must have had intense irritation of the brain, and some shock must have supervened to bring him to the state in which I find him. 

From The French Prisoners of Norman Cross A Tale by Brown, Arthur, Rev.

From my saying this do not suppose that I am Mr. Whitley Stokes, or Babu Keshub Chundra Sen. I am a Churchman, beneath the surface, though a pellicle of inquiry may have supervened.

From Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by Aberigh-Mackay, George Robert

McLennan ventures the opinion that the practice of abortion so widely noted among Indians in the Western Hemisphere, "must have supervened on a practice of infanticide."

From Woman and the New Race by Sanger, Margaret