How to Use consumptive in a Sentence

consumptive

1 of 2 adjective
  • This is known as consumptive use.
    — Caitlin Looby, jsonline.com, 20 Aug. 2025
  • But trash is a persistent, consumptive force that’ll set up shop in any eager host.
    — Wesley Morris, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022
  • So a large chunk of our desktop products are sold to our largest customers on a purely consumptive basis.
    — Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, semafor.com, 6 Mar. 2026
  • And all this is happening as our consumptive habits require more goods, more packaging, more waste.
    — Steve Lopezcolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2019
  • But the opera really hinges on the role of the consumptive seamstress Mimi.
    — cleveland.com, 16 Sep. 2019
  • The most festive time of year – the winter holidays – is also the most consumptive.
    — Xander Peters, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Dec. 2022
  • There is also a growing movement for less-consumptive lifestyles that favors zero-waste goals.
    — Ana Baptista, The Conversation, 20 June 2019
  • That sort of consumptive nature has really changed the industry.
    — Ashley Cullins, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Suddenly, even adult celebrities looked like consumptive children.
    — Melissa Febos, Los Angeles Times, 8 Oct. 2024
  • Existing programs tend to focus on consumptive users, or hunters and anglers, given the revenue source of most state agencies.
    — Lindsey Botts, The Arizona Republic, 1 July 2022
  • All this suggests that Gore might not be the best face for a climate movement that routinely calls on the world to curtail economic growth and downsize its consumptive ways.
    — Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 6 May 2013
  • Non-consumptive uses that return water back to the system, like hydropower generation, can move forward.
    — Leia Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 Nov. 2022
  • But a coterie of groups are hoping their concerns about the way native carnivores are managed will also be considered and given equal weight alongside consumptive users.
    — Lindsey Botts, The Arizona Republic, 29 Jan. 2022
  • This isn’t an act of kindness; Ratso desperately needs someone to look after him as winter closes in and his consumptive lung disease worsens.
    — Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, 16 June 2022
  • The intent of Colorado law is that laughing gas only be sold to medical professionals and to those wishing to use it for non-consumptive use, like cooking.
    — The Denver Post Editorial Board, Denver Post, 14 Aug. 2025
  • The wildlife commission in Arizona, for example, is exclusively made up of hunters, and as a result, sees consumptive users as its main constituency.
    — Lindsey Botts, The Arizona Republic, 1 July 2022
  • The non-consumptive nature of birding allows a virtually unlimited number of people to share in the enjoyment of a sighting.
    — Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3 Aug. 2021
  • The area’s lenient winters, ideal for citrus groves, were just as attractive to consumptive European aristocrats.
    — Zoey Poll, Harper’s Magazine , 7 Dec. 2021
  • Similarly, if someone buys a digital asset seeking access to a particular blockchain, then that can be thought of as a kind of arcade token with a consumptive use, rather than as an investment tool.
    — Leo Schwartz, Fortune, 19 Sep. 2022
  • Agricultural irrigation is considered one of the biggest consumptive uses of large-scale water withdrawals, meaning the water does not return to the basin after it's used.
    — Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press, 27 Feb. 2018
  • This means increasing the amount of water that can be stored in reservoirs and holding ponds, building irrigation systems on farmland and streamlining water usage across the board to be more efficient and less consumptive.
    — Gabe Allen, Discover Magazine, 23 Feb. 2022
  • All demand is an effect of production, so unless producers are literally stuffing the consumptive fruits of their work into coffee cans, their production is mirrored by consumption.
    — John Tamny, Forbes.com, 20 June 2026
  • Yet Front Range communities continue to water needlessly consumptive lawns and gardens to keep the place looking like a community in the Midwest.
    — Dp Opinion, The Denver Post, 22 Sep. 2019
  • If anything, competitive eating became just another way to fold in on myself like a piece of dough, to reframe the consumptive appetites that led to fights, a DWI, and stints of flunking out of college.
    — Krista Stevens, Longreads, 12 July 2024
  • Researchers also updated data on consumptive water use for 14 major crops, installing ground weather stations across Yuma farmland during growing season.
    — The Arizona Republic, 15 Mar. 2024
  • The consumptive girl, by contrast, is revealed to be scandalously untrustworthy as a contributor to the household economy and dangerously prolific in physical interactions with men.
    — Jacqueline D. Wernimont, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Nov. 2024
  • Siegelman Stable is a collision of equestrian heritage, vintage Americana, and the modern streetwear sensibility that defines fashion’s consumptive cycle today.
    — Essence, 23 Dec. 2024
  • The Interior Department, meantime, has announced plans to repeal a Biden-era policy that elevated conservation as an official use of public lands, on equal footing with mining, grazing, energy extraction and other consumptive activities.
    — John Leos, AZCentral.com, 11 Sep. 2025
  • All consumption is preceded by production, and since governments produce nothing (another certain applause line at Cato, Mises, AEI, Hoover, and Heritage), the innocent are reduced to asking if the Fed gets its consumptive power from Pluto?
    — John Tamny, Forbes.com, 31 May 2026

consumptive

2 of 2 noun
  • Shivering is a normal reaction by which the body warms itself, but the act is energy consumptive.
    — Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News, 11 Oct. 2020
  • Hedge funders are supposed to be yodeling Tarzans, not fragile consumptives in a Verdi opera.
    — Jennifer Senior, New York Times, 1 Feb. 2017
  • Young rural migrant workers, hoping to get noticed, made videos that exaggerated the consumptive excesses of city life.
    — Oscar Schwartz, The New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2023
  • Immediate steps should be taken to reduce current consumptive uses in the Upper and Lower Basins.
    — Shaun McKinnon, AZCentral.com, 16 Sep. 2025
  • It will be characterized by the public debut of institutionally mature titans, as well as totally disruptive, fast moving and capital consumptive innovators.
    — Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Drawing on these earlier traditions, today’s solidarity tourism groups push back against travel as a consumptive industry that can be environmentally and socially destructive.
    — Zeb Larson, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Mar. 2022

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