How to Use off-the-shelf in a Sentence

off-the-shelf

adjective
  • Instead of burning lots of cash to reinvent the wheel, use an off-the-shelf product.
    Expert Panel®, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
  • That high barrier keeps many parks going back to off-the-shelf thrill rides.
    Robert Niles, Orange County Register, 5 Apr. 2024
  • More and more hardware and services are available on an off-the-shelf basis.
    IEEE Spectrum, 24 Mar. 2023
  • Tray mounting is a simple method that is used in most off-the-shelf 60 percent keyboards.
    Henri Robbins, WIRED, 25 Jan. 2024
  • Bialas explained there are two kinds of retinol: prescription-strength and off-the-shelf products.
    Amber Sayer, Health, 21 Sep. 2023
  • That’s why, sometimes, automakers will decide to use an off-the-shelf part on their new car.
    Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik, Quartz, 11 June 2024
  • There are a growing number of off-the-shelf costumes just for stoners, from this big bag of weed to this creepy pot leaf mask.
    Brooke Staggs, The Mercury News, 15 Oct. 2024
  • Trillin would never reach for such off-the-shelf and impolite verbiage.
    Dwight Garner, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024
  • More standard options range from $25 to $65 per square foot, with some off-the-shelf versions costing even less.
    Alyssa Longobucco, House Beautiful, 22 Feb. 2023
  • The researchers used standard off-the-shelf electronics.
    IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024
  • Now, with electric motors and batteries, the most off-the-shelf commuter car can waft with the serenity of a Packard with a straight-eight.
    Dan Neil, WSJ, 16 Mar. 2023
  • Its suspension is custom-tuned for the Tacoma and isn't available as an off-the-shelf product.
    Kristin Shaw, Ars Technica, 18 Dec. 2023
  • In spite of this, off-the-shelf CAR T therapy may still be vastly prohibitive to most who need it.
    William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Simply adopting off-the-shelf gen AI tools will likely not be enough: after all, the competition can do the same.
    Rodney Zimmel, Fortune, 24 Sep. 2024
  • Could a cyberattack trigger off-the-shelf pagers to explode?
    Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times, 18 Sep. 2024
  • On the downside, both off-the-shelf and DIY pinhole cameras use film or photographic paper.
    IEEE Spectrum, 27 Aug. 2023
  • The world is not short on off-the-shelf malware, and code written for the same purpose by ChatGPT is not any better than the current offering.
    Ryan Kalember, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2023
  • In the company’s demo video, the vehicle is using nothing more than off-the-shelf cameras.
    IEEE Spectrum, 24 Apr. 2024
  • The vehicle was built in part by using off-the-shelf components, including the controller.
    Nate Trela, USA TODAY, 28 June 2023
  • What was once mostly the realm of nation-state actors or large groups can now be accomplished with turnkey, off-the-shelf software available for purchase on the dark web.
    Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 July 2024
  • Ashcraft says that finding the right off-the-shelf needle in a haystack gives her curatorial work more staying power.
    Emily Evans Eerdmans, Architectural Digest, 23 July 2024
  • After a mistake with the shower tile order (which would have added time and money to fix), the couple wound up buying an off-the-shelf, beige option from Home Depot.
    Sophia Solano, Washington Post, 26 Mar. 2024
  • This ends years in which the US Army struggled to find a quadcopter that works in the field, but didn’t have the risks associated with being an off-the-shelf toy pressed into military use.
    Popular Science, 29 Nov. 2023
  • That’s no mean feat considering that much of the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) chopper was built using off-the-shelf smartphone processors and cameras.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 14 Apr. 2023
  • At first, Kyiv was mostly using off-the-shelf equipment, either for surveillance or ingeniously adapted on the ground to drop small bombs.
    Vasco Cotovio, CNN, 2 Apr. 2024
  • In fact, Hubble Network says its technology can work over off-the-shelf Bluetooth chips through a software update, rather than any hardware change.
    Michael Kan, PCMAG, 6 May 2024
  • The fingertip sensor, made from off-the-shelf electronics, is installed on an existing prosthetic in a few hours.
    Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Mar. 2024
  • The company is one of several that offers turnkey custom design and installations, as well as off-the-shelf packages to DIY-ers that fit their needs and budget.
    Scott Kramer, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2023
  • With a growing number of off-the-shelf enterprise generative AI tools now available, sitting on the AI sidelines is no longer an option.
    Shane Luke, Fortune, 27 Sep. 2023
  • That was followed by open source with customization (31%), which are AI models built to address a specific use case, and then off-the-shelf open source (20%), AI models that are generally free to use.
    John Kell, Fortune, 17 July 2024

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