How to Use sterile in a Sentence

sterile

adjective
  • The band wanted to be sure the new record was not sterile.
    Eric Fuller, Forbes, 15 Apr. 2022
  • At Canyon Creek, the sterile rooms were quiet and still.
    Lizzie Presser, ProPublica, 29 Nov. 2022
  • They are meant to feel less sterile and more like home.
    Chloe Berger, Fortune, 12 May 2022
  • The process begins with sterile source tissue, a small piece of a leaf, fruit, root, or shoot.
    Nicole Kagan, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Aug. 2023
  • The mix should be sterile and hold roughly an equal amount of air and moisture.
    Benjamin Whitacre, Better Homes & Gardens, 14 July 2022
  • The piercer will first clean and prep your skin, using a sterile, single-use pen to mark the spot of your piercing.
    Madeleine Burry, Health, 1 Feb. 2024
  • And who would know the best about a sterile environment?
    David Browne, Rolling Stone, 15 June 2022
  • At the end of this very long, sterile block is one other person, a young woman.
    Lawrence Jackson, Harper's Magazine, 10 July 2023
  • The woman handed the couple some sterile gauze and told them to keep pressure applied to the wound, Zach said.
    oregonlive, 25 July 2023
  • If part of the bone protrudes, apply pressure and cover with a clean, sterile gauze.
    Stacey Colino, Parents, 20 Sep. 2023
  • The skin grafts, which are produced in sheets, keep wounds sterile and promote healing.
    Andy Peters, ajc, 11 Apr. 2022
  • Its planes of gray and black feel hard-edged and sterile, which is to say entirely at odds with the emotional warmth of the food coming out of the kitchen.
    Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2024
  • Keeping the skin clean is also key, so use sterile bandages.
    Scott Lafee, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Sep. 2022
  • Using sterile pruners, cut three-inch sections of stem.
    Steve Bender, Southern Living, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Overall, most of the valve procedures only take about a half hour, and don't even require a sterile surgery suite.
    Devi Shastri, Journal Sentinel, 31 Aug. 2022
  • Overall, the mix gives the home a bright, airy feel and keeps the dominantly white spaces from feeling sterile.
    Kristina McGuirk, Better Homes & Gardens, 7 Apr. 2022
  • The model home looks clean and orderly, if a little sterile.
    Anna Russell, The New Yorker, 24 Sep. 2022
  • Despite her time in Raymond’s harem (mules are sterile), Daisy had multiple foals over the years.
    Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 6 Dec. 2023
  • But whether or not homeopathic eye drops are labeled as sterile doesn't seem to matter to the FDA.
    Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 12 Dec. 2023
  • Specialized arrows are equipped with a float and tipped with a small, hollow and sterile cylinder with barbs on the inside grab a bit of skin.
    Dino Grandoni, Anchorage Daily News, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Despite the hairnets, the overalls, and the sterile interior of the warehouse, the scene is oddly timeless.
    Sam Jones, WIRED, 4 Feb. 2023
  • Made from metal shipping containers, the new tiny homes have anything but a sterile feel to them.
    Brammhi Balarajan, CNN, 25 Feb. 2024
  • The intense overhead lights left me feeling sterile, cold and exposed.
    Serenitie Wang, CNN, 17 June 2022
  • The water comes from young, green coconuts and is entirely sterile.
    Amy Drew Thompson, Orlando Sentinel, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Pfizer will raise prices by 10% on more than a dozen sterile injectable drugs used in hospitals.
    Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY, 30 Jan. 2023
  • Tech gifts don’t have to be sterile or overly technical.
    Sara Coughlin, SELF, 7 May 2022
  • Sometimes viruses are passed-down in a plant’s seeds, but aster yellows renders blooms more-or-less sterile.
    Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 28 July 2022
  • Yet the addition of sterile water to this soil in the Wolf Trap revealed the rapid growth of bacterial cultures.
    Marissa Grunes, Discover Magazine, 6 Apr. 2023
  • In Medina-Cleghorn’s oasis, there are no sterile white lab coats.
    Liana Satenstein, Vogue, 29 Sep. 2023
  • The sterile white halls, beaming fluorescent lights, and deep green carpeting set the perfect scene for the eerie tale.
    Kelly Allen, House Beautiful, 5 Jan. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sterile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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