How to Use behave in a Sentence

behave

verb
  • If you can't behave in the store we'll have to leave.
  • He behaves like a child!
  • If you can't behave yourself in the store we'll have to leave.
  • I wish those children would behave themselves.
  • The experiment tested how various metals behave under heat and pressure.
  • How should the yield curve behave?
    — Robert Daugherty, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026
  • What's worse, not all of those fault lines behave the same way.
    — Ben Finley, ajc, 16 Aug. 2021
  • Decades on, those pieces still behave the way they were meant to.
    — John Vorwald, Robb Report, 15 Mar. 2026
  • That is not how the heat shield is supposed to behave.
    — Jackie Wattles, CNN Money, 23 Jan. 2026
  • Telling the model to behave does not work.
    — Shreyans Mehta, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • This was how people and things behaved around her.
    — Rachel Cusk, New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2025
  • This is not how a leader behaves.
    — Jon Markman, Forbes.com, 26 June 2026
  • Whiteflies behave like aphids and suck sap from the plants.
    — Mary Marlowe Leverette, Southern Living, 30 May 2026
  • Or a gaggle of ill-behaved bros.
    — Elise Taylor, Vanity Fair, 22 Apr. 2026
  • In some ways, tomato plants behave more like a vine than a bush.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 14 June 2026
  • That’s how a big-market team should behave.
    — Sahadev Sharma, New York Times, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Well behaved dogs on leash are welcome.
    — Ramona Sentinel, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Feb. 2026
  • In short, that means telling the chatbot to behave in a way it has been told not to.
    — Matt Burgess, WIRED, 29 Nov. 2023
  • So why is the bond market behaving in such a weird way?
    — Fred Imbert, CNBC, 3 Mar. 2026
  • Humans tend to behave in a way to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
    — Kevin King, The Conversation, 28 Apr. 2022
  • And this was rare compared with how women behaved at the time.
    — Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Please understand healthy adults do not behave in such a way.
    — Olivia Muenter, Woman's Day, 14 June 2022
  • But behave yourself—the walls to the cabin aren’t a mile high.
    — Passport By Forbeslife, Forbes, 16 Aug. 2024
  • And that doesn't mean that everybody behaves in the same way.
    — Dalton Ross, Entertainment Weekly, 20 Feb. 2026
  • And that doesn't mean that everybody behaves in the same way.
    — Staff Author, Entertainment Weekly, 28 Feb. 2026
  • Tariffs can behave the same way, though on a smaller scale.
    — Tobias Burns, The Hill, 5 Sep. 2025
  • How the mice behaved would not affect the outcome.
    — Eric Yttri, The Conversation, 12 Feb. 2026
  • And in the pre-hat era, a shape would invariably behave in one of two ways.
    — Craig S. Kaplan, Scientific American, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Americans should learn from them how to behave when the votes don’t go your way.
    — Dominic Pino, National Review, 21 Sep. 2021
  • Panic buying behaves much like a bank run.
    — Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 23 Mar. 2026

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