How to Use constrain in a Sentence

constrain

verb
  • Not that the adults were all that constrained.
    — Noah Furtado, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 Mar. 2026
  • Bonta is blunt about how constrained the state will be.
    — Kate Wolffe, Sacbee.com, 29 Jan. 2026
  • They are not constrained by school drop-offs and pickups.
    — Literary Hub, 21 Jan. 2026
  • And that means the supply is constrained.
    — Dana Taylor, USA Today, 16 June 2026
  • Her gait is so constrained by her frailty that her feet hardly leave the ground.
    — Meghan O’Gieblyn, Harpers Magazine, 30 June 2026
  • When one of those levers is constrained, the others have to do more of the work.
    — Chicago Tribune, 30 Apr. 2026
  • Right now, the market is constrained.
    — Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 31 Jan. 2026
  • And at the same time, you’re constrained by rules of decorum and things like that.
    — Shirley Halperin, Rolling Stone, 17 Feb. 2026
  • Payroll is constrained by a hard cap and a spending floor.
    — Eddie Brown, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 May 2026
  • The fish’s size is usually constrained by the size of its tank.
    — National Geographic, 20 Oct. 2019
  • That's going to be a big, big concern that is tough to constrain.
    — Wired Staff, WIRED, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Both are hard to audit and constrained by available land.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 Sep. 2025
  • First, there are still some rules constraining broadband providers.
    — Klint Finley, WIRED, 11 June 2018
  • This has constrained turnover and turnover is what makes the world go 'round for the mortgage business.
    — Josh Brown,sean Russo, CNBC, 11 Sep. 2025
  • The effect is that thrust is no longer constrained to a single axis.
    — Etiido Uko march 30, New Atlas, 30 Mar. 2026
  • Imagine the electrons in an atom are constrained within the atom by a wall.
    — Niranjan Shivaram, The Conversation, 4 Oct. 2023
  • Yet the time cost of travel still seems to constrain presidents.
    — Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily, 16 June 2026
  • Much of the county’s budget is also constrained by state law.
    — Nora O'Neill, Charlotte Observer, 3 Feb. 2026
  • Beijing, on the other hand, has been much less constrained by the need for balance.
    — Mark Leonard, Foreign Affairs, 8 Jan. 2024
  • That’s one less seller and buyer, which constrains both sides of the market.
    — Byalena Botros, Fortune, 23 Aug. 2023
  • But they are constrained by money—its excess and its absence.
    — Katy Siegel, Artforum, 2 June 2026
  • The four dots represent walls; the fifth, the inmate constrained by them.
    — Matthew Ormseth, Los Angeles Times, 1 July 2024
  • That’s the most effective way to constrain the flow of cotton picked by hands that had no choice.
    — Adrian Zenz, WSJ, 15 Dec. 2020
  • Still, players were constrained only by innings and outs, not time.
    — USA Today, 28 Mar. 2023
  • With supply constrained, prices shot up in the 2010s.
    — Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, 3 Mar. 2026
  • What once protected people can start to constrain them.
    — Lisa Deaderick, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 May 2026
  • The immune system can’t constrain it, but doesn’t stop trying.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 5 Aug. 2020
  • Providers are constrained by how much parents are willing and able to pay, which means wages for workers are low.
    — Axios, 31 July 2024
  • Whether or not life is constrained to our definition of it here on Earth.
    — Lauren Goode, WIRED, 21 Mar. 2024
  • For what constrains both young men is not their actual jobs or income, but their status.
    — Proma Khosla, IndieWire, 25 Sep. 2025

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