How to Use dormant in a Sentence

dormant

adjective
  • The seeds will remain dormant until the spring.
  • Her emotions have lain dormant for many years.
  • Then, a hard freeze late in the fall meant all that grass went dormant.
    Laura Paddison, CNN, 3 Mar. 2024
  • The rest of their Ethereum would remain dormant for the next nine months.
    Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 12 Oct. 2023
  • By then, Koester said, the case had been dormant for 40-plus years.
    Rio Yamat, The Enquirer, 15 June 2023
  • The virus had been dormant for tens of thousands of years.
    Jacob Siegal, BGR, 3 Dec. 2022
  • The plant goes dormant, but the leaves hold their color.
    Chris McKeown, The Enquirer, 18 May 2024
  • Today, most of the pipes lie dormant under the streets of New York.
    Vanessa Armstrong, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Dec. 2023
  • The latent phase: Can lie dormant for decades in nerve cells near the head and spine.
    USA Today, 23 May 2022
  • Store the dormant corms in a cool, dry spot and replant next May.
    Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 2 May 2024
  • The plant grows a big leaf each year which wilts and then becomes dormant.
    Sophie Carson, Journal Sentinel, 14 July 2023
  • The best time to move the wood pile would be when the bees are dormant, which is wintertime.
    oregonlive, 6 Nov. 2022
  • Then the site went dormant last winter when cobalt prices dropped.
    Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 8 Sep. 2023
  • In winter, nothing needs to be done to the logs as the mushrooms go dormant.
    Joanne Kempinger Demski, Journal Sentinel, 13 Apr. 2023
  • The best time to make the move is when the bulbs go dormant, fall through late winter, before spring growth.
    Tom MacCubbin, Orlando Sentinel, 16 July 2022
  • Winter shade when the plant is dormant is not a problem.
    Nan Sterman, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Jan. 2024
  • Alberg rekindles the dormant fire of a man who has lost his spark.
    Joe Otterson, Variety, 19 Mar. 2024
  • Many natives go dormant during the hotter months and a splash could be the end of them.
    Kristin Guy, Sunset Magazine, 10 July 2024
  • Motocross starts toward the end of May, is over at the end of August, and then is dormant.
    Maury Brown, Forbes, 23 Oct. 2024
  • Most tree-ring records are blind to what happens in winter, when the trees are dormant.
    Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News, 26 June 2022
  • Spring blooming native and South African bulbs are dormant now, so this is the time to plant them.
    Nan Sterman, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 July 2022
  • As just one example, the City of Phoenix has 5,500 dormant parcels.
    Ronald J. Hansen, The Arizona Republic, 12 July 2024
  • But Young marks the best chance for the Texans to jumpstart a rebuild that has been dormant for some time.
    Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz, Detroit Free Press, 10 Jan. 2023
  • The idea here was that the game may go dormant and then re-emerge with some sort of free-to-play relaunch to draw in more players.
    Paul Tassi, Forbes, 22 Sep. 2024
  • Their seeds just sit dormant in the dry soil, waiting for their moment.
    Christopher Intagliata, Scientific American, 3 May 2023
  • During drier parts of the year, the bulbs can go dormant, or the plant may simply not flower.
    Kenneth Setzer, Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024
  • While the corpse flowers lay dormant, bright green branches pop out of the soil beside them.
    Susan Dunne, Hartford Courant, 1 Nov. 2022
  • From there, the offense went dormant, held without a first down its next four possessions and to just 58 yards the rest of the game.
    Eamonn Ryan, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Oct. 2022
  • Roots grow and establish themselves in the more excellent soil, even as the trees above ground prepare to go dormant for the winter.
    Tammy Sons, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024
  • Most went dormant in August and September, then the rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene made their way up here.
    Chris McKeown, The Enquirer, 2 Nov. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dormant.' 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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