How to Use dispositive in a Sentence

dispositive

adjective
  • The not-precedent camp points to the first clause as dispositive.
    — Ian MacDougall, ProPublica, 1 Nov. 2020
  • Pleasing Kennedy is wise but not dispositive, as lawyers at the court like to say.
    — The Washington Post, Twin Cities, 31 Jan. 2017
  • Keep in mind that the state’s presentation on this score is not dispositive.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 9 Apr. 2021
  • The two judges who decided this case are both named Edith, which is weird, but not dispositive.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 16 Mar. 2018
  • The fact that no one has taken a run at Davidson in the week since the video dropped is likely dispositive of the issue.
    — Daniel Novack, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Mar. 2022
  • But the court here said statements by the president during the campaign were not dispositive.
    — Fox News, 27 June 2018
  • While economic factors were not dispositive in this list, other factors are more so.
    — William P. Barrett, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
  • Whatever else might be said about the process today, excellence plainly is no longer the dispositive virtue.
    — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 9 Feb. 2017
  • These latest results are a bit more ambiguous but hardly dispositive.
    — Felix Salmon, Axios, 26 July 2024
  • The skids were further greased by the ease of accommodating feelings as dispositive in human events.
    — WSJ, 8 May 2018
  • Cold hard cash could be dispositive in close races, but not if Republicans have enough money to be competitive.
    — Karl Rove, WSJ, 27 Apr. 2022
  • For me the civil rights movement was about lowering the racial identity as a dispositive feature of the human being.
    — Isaac Chotiner, Slate Magazine, 24 Apr. 2017
  • Those who were waiting on the sidelines for the next game served as a jury, although their verdict wasn’t necessarily dispositive.
    — Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 13 June 2024
  • Fitting the timeframe here shouldn't be considered dispositive.
    — The Crossover Staff, SI.com, 18 Sep. 2019
  • But the Ninth Circuit Court did not accept that evidence as dispositive.
    — Jack Butler, National Review, 14 Mar. 2020
  • None of the four reasons listed above is dispositive; nothing guarantees that Haley will take a stand for tax disclosure.
    — Joseph Thorndike, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2023
  • The Fed should play a large role, but not a dispositive one, given the many stakeholders who should determine national policy.
    — J. Christopher Giancarlo, Fortune Crypto, 22 Aug. 2023
  • As many scientists have since pointed out, the mere presence of the furin cleavage site is not dispositive of a Frankenstein experiment gone wrong.
    — Adam Federman, The Atlantic, 25 Sep. 2021
  • But under California law blood tests were not dispositive, and the case went to trial, where Chaplin was badly outlawyered.
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2023
  • These digital platforms have led to a new cultural zeitgeist where country of origin and language are no longer dispositive factors in what audiences choose to watch or listen to.
    — Chris Gallagher, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Sep. 2024
  • But conservatives should spare a moment to give some consideration to the merits — which are real but not dispositive — of the other side of the argument.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 3 Aug. 2017
  • The common theory on prices and expectations for a long time was that household and Main Street guesses about future price movements were dispositive.
    — Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 20 May 2021
  • So Obergefell is relevant to Masterpiece Cakeshop, but not dispositive.
    — Dale Carpenter, Washington Post, 2 July 2017
  • Implicit in the argument in the memo is that this omission on the part of the feds about Steele, if indeed there was such an omission, was dispositive to the judge’s decision to endorse the warrant.
    — Andrew Cohen, Esquire, 2 Feb. 2018
  • At the very least, states using such machines should pass laws requiring that the human-readable names printed on the ballot, and not a bar code readable only by machine, should be dispositive in the event of a recount.
    — Richard L. Hasen, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
  • The reality that this prosecution more likely would diminish rather than enhance consumer welfare will not be legally dispositive.
    — Alden Abbott, Forbes, 13 Dec. 2024
  • Without conceding that these claims are true, the Speaker should bend every effort to persuade the American public that such objections are not dispositive.
    — Philip Bobbitt, Time, 16 Dec. 2019
  • Not that the votes of Ocasio-Cortez types figure to be dispositive in an election in which the swing votes everyone is looking to harvest are the ones in the white working class in the upper Midwest.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 16 Apr. 2020
  • Yet Lemoine insisted, first to his Google colleagues and then to the world at large, that his ability to feel an emotional attachment to a chatbot was itself dispositive of the chatbot’s sentience.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 14 June 2022
  • In a gerrymandered state like Illinois, primary battles for congressional seats typically are more dispositive than the general election in the fall.
    — The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 4 Feb. 2026

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