How to Use dispositive in a Sentence

dispositive

adjective

• The not-precedent camp points to the first clause as dispositive.
  — Ian MacDougall, ProPublica, 1 Nov. 2020
• Pleasing Kennedy is wise but not dispositive, as lawyers at the court like to say.
  — The Washington Post, Twin Cities, 31 Jan. 2017
• The fact that no one has taken a run at Davidson in the week since the video dropped is likely dispositive of the issue.
  — Daniel Novack, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Mar. 2022
• The two judges who decided this case are both named Edith, which is weird, but not dispositive.
  — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 16 Mar. 2018
• Keep in mind that the state’s presentation on this score is not dispositive.
  — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 9 Apr. 2021
• But the court here said statements by the president during the campaign were not dispositive.
  — Fox News, 27 June 2018
• Not that the votes of Ocasio-Cortez types figure to be dispositive in an election in which the swing votes everyone is looking to harvest are the ones in the white working class in the upper Midwest.
  — Kyle Smith, National Review, 16 Apr. 2020
• Implicit in the argument in the memo is that this omission on the part of the feds about Steele, if indeed there was such an omission, was dispositive to the judge’s decision to endorse the warrant.
  — Andrew Cohen, Esquire, 2 Feb. 2018
• Whatever else might be said about the process today, excellence plainly is no longer the dispositive virtue.
  — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 9 Feb. 2017
• But the Ninth Circuit Court did not accept that evidence as dispositive.
  — Jack Butler, National Review, 14 Mar. 2020
• Get our daily newsletter First, a caveat: polls this early are far from dispositive.
  — J.e.f. | Washington, The Economist, 3 Sep. 2019
• For me the civil rights movement was about lowering the racial identity as a dispositive feature of the human being.
  — Isaac Chotiner, Slate Magazine, 24 Apr. 2017
• The skids were further greased by the ease of accommodating feelings as dispositive in human events.
  — WSJ, 8 May 2018
• For the Sandernistas, the crisis is dispositive proof of the need for universal health care; for Trumpists, of the need to control our borders; for the Bidenites in between, of the need for nonpartisan expertise.
  — Christopher Beha, Harper's Magazine, 25 May 2020
• None of the four reasons listed above is dispositive; nothing guarantees that Haley will take a stand for tax disclosure.
  — Joseph Thorndike, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2023
• While economic factors were not dispositive in this list, other factors are more so.
  — William P. Barrett, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
• As many scientists have since pointed out, the mere presence of the furin cleavage site is not dispositive of a Frankenstein experiment gone wrong.
  — Adam Federman, The Atlantic, 25 Sep. 2021
• Cold hard cash could be dispositive in close races, but not if Republicans have enough money to be competitive.
  — Karl Rove, WSJ, 27 Apr. 2022
• Delayed disclosure of abuse is common so this is not dispositive.
  — WSJ, 1 Oct. 2018
• At the very least, states using such machines should pass laws requiring that the human-readable names printed on the ballot, and not a bar code readable only by machine, should be dispositive in the event of a recount.
  — Richard L. Hasen, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
• The common theory on prices and expectations for a long time was that household and Main Street guesses about future price movements were dispositive.
  — Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 20 May 2021
• Yet Lemoine insisted, first to his Google colleagues and then to the world at large, that his ability to feel an emotional attachment to a chatbot was itself dispositive of the chatbot’s sentience.
  — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 14 June 2022
• But conservatives should spare a moment to give some consideration to the merits — which are real but not dispositive — of the other side of the argument.
  — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 3 Aug. 2017
• From the Department of Labor: Each factor is considered, but none are required or dispositive.
  — AJC.com, 13 Oct. 2017
• Without conceding that these claims are true, the Speaker should bend every effort to persuade the American public that such objections are not dispositive.
  — Philip Bobbitt, Time, 16 Dec. 2019
• That may seem like an antiquated approach in an age of ever-improving DNA technology; some 350 men and women have now been freed thanks to its dispositive power.
  — Barbara Bradley Hagerty, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2018
• Subscribe That may seem like an antiquated approach in an age of ever-improving DNA technology; some 350 men and women have now been freed thanks to its dispositive power.
  — Barbara Bradley Hagerty, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2018
• Fitting the timeframe here shouldn't be considered dispositive.
  — The Crossover Staff, SI.com, 18 Sep. 2019
• So Obergefell is relevant to Masterpiece Cakeshop, but not dispositive.
  — Dale Carpenter, Washington Post, 2 July 2017
• Maybe that's a smidge low, but top eight doesn't sound quite right, either, for a group whose dispositive performance virtues in Big East play were outstanding defensive rebounding and a highly favorable disparity in free throws.
  — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 6 Mar. 2018

Last Updated: 15 Oct 2024