How to Use brained in a Sentence

brained

adjective
  • Turns out Smith was right to tap into her right-brained self.
    — Taiia Smart Young, Essence, 9 Apr. 2021
  • This is especially true of big-brained birds like crows, ravens and blue jays.
    — Val Cunningham Special To The Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 15 June 2021
  • This tiny, small-brained creature stood just a bit more than three feet tall and had a brain as big as a chimp.
    — Pasquale Raia, The Conversation, 8 Oct. 2019
  • This is one of the rare big-brained small words that work equally well as a noun, a verb and an adjective.
    — Damon Young, Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2022
  • Though a far cry from a human, big-brained cuttlefish are good candidates for stereo vision.
    — Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2020
  • What Drake knew was how to combine the right and left-brained attributes of a well-rounded success story.
    — Kathy Iandoli, Billboard, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Savage thinks the shift might have something to do with the uniquely human challenge of having big-brained babies.
    — Corryn Wetzel, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Sep. 2020
  • Our early ancestors did not simply become bigger brained and more upright over time.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 9 May 2017
  • Very few other species ever pass the test; those that do are mostly or entirely big-brained mammals such as chimpanzees.
    — Quanta Magazine, 12 Dec. 2018
  • Age of small-brained hominin is surprisingly younger than expected.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Animal rights activists argued that zoo enclosures were no place for big-brained, social pachyderms.
    — Jennifer Peltz, Fortune, 28 May 2026
  • Animal rights activists argued that zoo enclosures were no place for big-brained, social pachyderms.
    — CBS News, 27 May 2026
  • Life only became intelligent with the rise of large-brained mammals, like us and our direct ancestors.
    — Big Think, 17 Feb. 2026
  • This is the third consecutive game he’s taken a blank-brained penalty for what amounts to unsportsmanlike conduct.
    — Sam Mellinger, kansascity, 17 Sep. 2017
  • Emily Watson plays Florence’s healthy-brained but cruel mother.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 17 May 2018
  • Whether the vision that had birthed it was fact or fiction, historical record or fever-brained concoction, hardly seemed to matter.
    — Andrew Kay, Longreads, 17 July 2021
  • Even if mom doesn’t have children at home, stress-relief is top of mind as Americans emerge from lockdown foggy-brained and sleep-deprived.
    — Anna Haines, Forbes, 6 May 2021
  • But Bennett was also big-brained and quick-witted, with interests that stretched well beyond athletics.
    — Howard Bryant, The Atlantic, 17 Dec. 2020
  • Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 16 Oct. 2018
  • Scott wasn’t sure what to make of McDowell, an overstuffed pillow of a 30-year-old stoner who came off as a soft-brained teen.
    — Paul Solotaroff, Rolling Stone, 30 Jan. 2022
  • Is Bryce Harper’s toothpaste application technique big-brained or a horror show?
    — Matt Reigle Outkick, FOXNews.com, 26 May 2026
  • To Rio’s distress, a group of boys at a table nearby start to flirt coarsely with the overdeveloped and somewhat under-brained Pucha.
    — Deborah Eisenberg, The New York Review of Books, 11 June 2020
  • This analysis could only emerge from the goldfish-brained world of Beltway journalism, in which no information is retained for more than a day or two.
    — Kate Aronoff, The New Republic, 4 Aug. 2021
  • View 86 Photos Jaguar hopes the Sportbrake can carve out its own niche within a niche as a sporty driver’s car for right-brained pragmatists.
    — Eric Tingwall, Car and Driver, 27 Oct. 2017
  • Nothing’s more American than a science-hero—an indomitable, big-brained hasher-out of ideas that change the world, that make the impossible possible.
    — Wired, 2 Aug. 2019
  • Announced in 2015, the tiny-brained species sports a remarkable mosaic of modern and archaic features.
    — Michael Greshko, National Geographic, 13 Sep. 2017
  • While this shrinking was observed across these migratory species, new research suggests that birds with bigger brains—relative to their body size—aren’t shrinking like their smaller-brained kin.
    — Doug Johnson, Ars Technica, 14 Feb. 2022
  • The Obama administration is poised to take up one of the more dangerous and hare-brained schemes of the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon.
    — Noah Shachtman, WIRED, 23 Apr. 2010
  • This conception of dance music as channeling an elevated presence of mind in an unbound flow state (or whatever) is both galaxy-brained and complete nonsense.
    — Harry Tafoya, Pitchfork, 1 May 2026
  • But the filmmakers are so cavalier about the idea that any of this is supposed to make any sense that there's a certain liberation in not burdening two human-brained insects with the fate of the entire universe.
    — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 June 2018

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