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.

These words, by having no application, ought to be unoperative; but when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we are affected by them even without the occasions.

From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Burke, Edmund

There lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness of the terror, which is the natural concomitant of greatness.

From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Burke, Edmund