How to Use contrive in a Sentence

contrive

verb

• The prisoners contrived a way to escape.
• He contrived a meeting with the president.
• There were so many things that contrived to guide us to this format.
  — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 6 Mar. 2023
• This time, though, there’s no theme to contrive to fit; just look at the headlines about events and trends of the current day.
  — Washington Post, 10 June 2021
• The House may even contrive a reason to impeach the President, if only for the fun of it.
  — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 1 May 2022
• One man even contrived somehow to get across while still in iron fetters.
  — Adam Goodheart, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Sep. 2023
• Everything has been contrived with a short-term plan or long-term plan.
  — Liza Lentini, SPIN, 12 May 2023
• Now, parents don't have to contrive a scheme to keep their kids from eating too much candy in one day.
  — Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY, 21 Oct. 2020
• That might be due to O.A.R.'s talent for ad libbing and contriving new ways to perform the same song.
  — Patrick Cooley, cleveland.com, 25 June 2017
• If any of her work were turned into a screenplay, there would be no need to contrive sets or costumes.
  — Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2020
• That sounds like just the kind of deep strategy µZero and Artuµ would contrive.
  — Dr. Will Roper, Popular Mechanics, 19 Jan. 2021
• The state and energy are read out and used to contrive a new guess for the ground state configuration.
  — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 14 Sep. 2017
• That happens when the plot contrives to conveniently take both her husband and her father-in-law away from the house at the same time.
  — Kenneth Turan, Detroit Free Press, 27 July 2017
• More than that, Houck somehow contrives to build violins as well.
  — Myung J. Chun, latimes.com, 27 Jan. 2017
• The link that connects the past to the present is one that only the most old-fashioned of fictional imaginations would dare to contrive.
  — Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 23 Oct. 2017
• United’s fragile defense, though, nearly contrived to throw away the chance of glory.
  — Rob Harris, The Denver Post, 26 Feb. 2017
• But today’s nicknames, many of them contrived, most of them barely known outside the clubhouse, whiff when matched against baseball’s best.
  — Patrick Saunders, The Denver Post, 10 Aug. 2019
• There is a wryness to many of these poems, and some contrive a mordant introspection.
  — Frank Wilson, Philly.com, 19 Feb. 2018
• And as friends, strangers and even the local news station join the herculean effort, clichéd stabs at greater meaning make this true story feel strangely contrived.
  — Jen Yamato, Washington Post, 20 Feb. 2024
• Wilson was then sent clear with a long ball over the top, but the Cherries marksman contrived to stroke wide one-on-one with Elliot as his first-team rustiness reared its head at the wrong moment.
  — SI.com, 4 Nov. 2017
• Somehow this small woman in a cotton sari and with a tidy gray bun contrived to put the place on the international tourist map, expanding its 4 rooms to 25 and adding a pool.
  — Guy Trebay, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Feb. 2016
• The deliveryman would contrive a reason to sit down and put the pizza on his lap — and open the top to reveal his own tumescent penis, popping up through a hole cut in the pizza.
  — Maureen O’Connor, The Cut, 11 June 2017
• The economic plan is to pretend the bad news isn’t happening or contrive some distraction.
  — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 28 July 2022
• Eventually the craft does take off, but never leaves the atmosphere, the better to contrive a parachute-free falling stunt for the big finish.
  — New York Times, 5 July 2018
• While this all sounds as contrived as friends forcing each other to dance with their crushes in a school gym, that's also what makes the formula work so well for this show and many others.
  — Whitney Friedlander, CNN, 25 June 2019
• According to Latinobarometro, a pollster, of the Latin Americans who eat only one meal a day, one out of three still contrives to use a smartphone.
  — The Economist, 8 June 2019
• The film gets outside big cities to show an unusual range of characters, but the characters themselves feel contrived.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 5 Dec. 2023
• The script contrives to set Oliver against Poirot for various reasons, and to uncertain results.
  — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 14 Sep. 2023
• What evolves in that office belies the impersonal surroundings, but not in the soapy ways a writer of lesser gifts might contrive.
  — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 27 May 2022
• Over the years since, DC Comics has suffered conniptions in contriving ways to use characters who are tethered to the middle of the last century.
  — cleveland, 29 May 2020

Last Updated: 25 Jun 2024