How to Use preemptive in a Sentence

preemptive

adjective

• The country took preemptive action against the perceived enemy.
• Those two strikes were part of five preemptive strikes the U.S. took over the course of five days last week.
  — Eleanor Watson, CBS News, 22 Jan. 2024
• There was rage in there, for sure, a touch of preemptive regret.
  — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 30 Sep. 2023
• Mitchell didn’t have to wait until 2023 to write a preemptive last-word on the subject.
  — Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork, 4 Oct. 2023
• And preemptive kudos for the next time — because there will be a next time.
  — Nathan Baird, cleveland, 7 Nov. 2022
• There was no other way than to be preemptive in a story that had to be watched.
  — Karen Mizoguchi, PEOPLE.com, 19 Jan. 2018
• In today’s deal, North’s leap to four hearts was preemptive.
  — Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 21 July 2019
• In today’s deal, East bid three spades (preemptive) with this hand.
  — Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 20 Feb. 2024
• Newsom has been among the critics of the preemptive shutoffs.
  — Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 2 Nov. 2019
• Britain’s preemptive response destroyed most of Denmark’s merchant fleet, one of the largest in the world.
  — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2023
• Thanks to a long drive and some preemptive thinking, the Coanes and their daughter managed to survive both storms.
  — Eileen Reslen, Redbook, 15 Sep. 2017
• For the next runner, Gorman nudged me and bellowed a loud and preemptive hello.
  — Doreen St. Félix, Vogue, 7 Apr. 2021
• The closer Iran gets to a bomb, the more the risks of war in the region will rise—and mainly via a potential preemptive attack by Israel.
  — Michael A. Cohen, The New Republic, 25 Jan. 2022
• The speculation that the fight may be postponed has led some businesses tied to the event to take preemptive steps.
  — Lance Pugmire, latimes.com, 29 Mar. 2018
• The three of them will share the stage on the second night of debates, and Biden’s team has already put out preemptive attacks on Harris and Booker.
  — Lissandra Villa/detroit, Time, 31 July 2019
• But the Texas law was designed to avoid preemptive legal review.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2021
• Let’s not do a preemptive strike in invalidating the will of the voters.
  — David Garrick, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 June 2019
• Perhaps most troubling is that all this has led to a wave of preemptive self-censoring.
  — Karen Chu, National Review, 18 Feb. 2022
• The title song is a preemptive strike, a breakup before things get too serious.
  — Star Tribune, 12 Nov. 2020
• Doing so would very likely spur a preemptive strike by Israel or even a joint strike by Israel and the United States.
  — Zhou Bo, Foreign Affairs, 13 May 2024
• And if the goal of the day is to bring lovers together, not to test to see if somebody loves you, there’s nothing wrong with having a preemptive dialogue.
  — Elizabeth Ayoola, Essence, 9 Feb. 2022
• This is the downside to the preemptive strike: Every projection is a confession of guilt.
  — Windsor Mann, TheWeek, 13 Mar. 2020
• Knocked off their feet by your preemptive move, the competition should be struggling to keep up in your customers’ minds.
  — Jim Heininger, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
• That’s exactly why Democrats and the broad left should launch a preemptive strike against his lionization.
  — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 10 Apr. 2023
• Trump held what amounted to a preemptive attack at a news conference in New York on Thursday.
  — Fritz Farrow, ABC News, 27 Sep. 2024
• Now, Ball said, businesses don’t need to make any preemptive moves with their deposits at other banks.
  — Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times, 13 Mar. 2023
• What about the worry that there could be some sort of preemptive style of policing that uses this technology?
  — Longreads, 21 Sep. 2017
• And then reports surfaced this week claiming that Meghan bullied royal staffers, in what feels like a preemptive strike before the CBS tell-all airs.
  — Rachel Burchfield, Glamour, 4 Mar. 2021
• Mangold jumped in with a preemptive defense of something Chalamet did not, in fact, do.
  — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 13 Dec. 2024
• The White House has not commented on these potential preemptive pardons.
  — Emma Withrow, Baltimore Sun, 19 Dec. 2024

Last Updated: 14 Jan 2025