How to Use cleft palate in a Sentence

cleft palate

noun
  • Her third child was born with a cleft palate and bone age delay.
    — Zayna Syed, The Arizona Republic, 17 Jan. 2023
  • Others had eye problems, ear problems, a cleft palate, no toes.
    — Katie Thomas, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2020
  • About half of all living bat species have cleft palates—a feature that may be tied to bat echolocation.
    — Riley Black, Scientific American, 9 Sep. 2023
  • Kimora even spent time with the mothers of children affected by cleft palate.
    — Angela Andaloro, Peoplemag, 10 Nov. 2023
  • Clefts have likely been around for a long time; just look at King Tut, who suffered from a partial cleft palate.
    — Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 15 Nov. 2021
  • Even reconstructive surgery, such as fixing a cleft lip or cleft palate, was questionable.
    — Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 10 July 2024
  • Or the dentist who arranged to fix a 9-year-old girl's cleft palate and straightened her teeth with orthodontic work.
    — Karina Bland, azcentral, 23 Nov. 2019
  • While repairing my cleft palate, the surgeon had mistakenly sewn closed my nasal passages.
    — Kavita Das, Longreads, 29 Jan. 2018
  • Two-month-old Onyxx Cooley was born with a cleft palate but apparently otherwise healthy.
    — Audrey Dutton, ProPublica, 26 Aug. 2025
  • Other Chinese are more willing to adopt children with treatable conditions like cleft palates.
    — The Economist, 6 June 2020
  • Valproic acid also increased the risk of seven other birth defects, including cleft palate and four types of heart defects.
    — Susan Scutti, CNN, 12 June 2019
  • All of the infants have distinctive physical birth defects, such as cleft palate and unusually small heads.
    — Erika Edwards, NBC News, 5 Dec. 2023
  • In addition to cleft palate, the 10 infants have unusually small bodies and heads.
    — Erika Edwards, NBC News, 5 Dec. 2023
  • The most common symptoms included cleft palates, unusually small bodies and heads, and noses that are turned upward.
    — Elizabeth Robinson, NBC News, 5 Dec. 2023
  • During her time there, the model mom visited the homes of patients recovering from cleft palate or cleft lip procedures.
    — Angela Andaloro, Peoplemag, 10 Nov. 2023
  • Cleft lip and cleft palate result when facial structures that are developing in an unborn baby don’t close completely.
    — Ben Thomas | [email protected], al, 5 Apr. 2020
  • Kaya's dog recently welcomed a litter of nine puppies, but difficulty struck when one of the pups, Saint, was born with a cleft palate.
    — Liz O'Connell, MSNBC Newsweek, 24 Sep. 2025
  • He was born with a cleft palate and underwent several operations to address the condition.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 15 June 2026
  • The nuns and nurses face a variety of challenging issues such as interracial adoption, cleft palate and sickle cell.
    — Caroline Hallemann, Town & Country, 31 Mar. 2019
  • Reuters/Kham Ryan Le Blanc got his first dose of opioids at three months old, after surgery for a unilateral cleft palate.
    — Doug Johnson, Quartz, 3 Nov. 2019
  • Initial exams indicate the cub suffered from severe birth defects, including a cleft palate, according to the zoo.
    — David Caraccio, sacbee, 15 May 2018
  • Santa Cristina García, 20, migrated to pay for her younger sister’s cleft palate surgery.
    — Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2021
  • Bright Beginnings had Tyesha assessed and determined the cleft palate affected her speech.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 2 Jan. 2018
  • Jacquetta was born with birth defects that prevented her from breathing, swallowing, or crying on her own, as well as a cleft palate and lip and deformities to one of her eyes and one hand.
    — Jamie Ducharme, Time, 16 Nov. 2022
  • Denver is coming off a victory over the Las Vegas Raiders on Thursday, but the game was about as pretty as a cleft palate.
    — Robert Marvi, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Nov. 2025
  • One in 700 babies are born with either (or both) a cleft lip and cleft palate, which occurs when the lip or mouth doesn’t properly fuse during early pregnancy.
    — Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 15 Nov. 2021
  • The symptoms and effects, which can include heart defects, learning disabilities, hearing loss and cleft palate, involve different parts of the body and vary in severity.
    — Kimberly Fornek, chicagotribune.com, 17 June 2019
  • Exposure to the poison can cause many diseases, from 20 forms of cancer to Type 2 diabetes and serious birth defects like cleft palates and club feet.
    — Steven V. Roberts, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2023
  • But [the child] also had spina bifida, scoliosis, a cleft palate that exposed her brain through her eye sockets, her brain had never developed past 8 weeks, and there was fluid in her brain.
    — Danielle Corcione, Teen Vogue, 22 Jan. 2018
  • Yet, past studies have linked fevers to a variety of birth defects, including cleft lip or cleft palate, certain types of heart defects, and neural tube defects commonly called spina bifida.
    — Susan Scutti, CNN, 10 Oct. 2017

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