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.

It also reveals something striking: observation introduces irreversibility, which is what gives time its forward direction.

From Science Daily • Nov. 17, 2025

This is distinct from how the term is often used, namely with the idea that it involves on a global scale "irreversibility, which has to do with the impossibility of returning to its previous state."

From Salon • Mar. 18, 2024

“We condemn the madness, the injustice, and the irreversibility of war that threatens the very existence of humanity,” wrote four members of what had been the local organizing committee statement on 27 February.

From Scientific American • Jul. 5, 2022

Although irreversibility is seen in day-to-day life—a broken glass does not resume its original state, for instance—complete irreversibility is a statistical statement that cannot be seen during the lifetime of the universe.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015

Helmholtz, in a justly celebrated theory, endeavoured to fit the principle of Carnot into the principle of least action; but the difficulties regarding the mechanical interpretation of the irreversibility of physical phenomena remain entire.

From The New Physics and Its Evolution by Poincaré, Lucien