How to Use gestate in a Sentence

gestate

verb
  • Next on the docket is a long-gestating project.
    — Clayton Davis, Variety, 12 Dec. 2025
  • And some ideas have to sit up here (pointing to the head) for a while to gestate and become ready and right.
    — Alex Zhavoronkov, Forbes, 29 Dec. 2021
  • This new live-action film, meanwhile, has been gestating for years.
    — Christian Holub, EW.com, 29 May 2024
  • The project gestated for a couple of years, with the major work taking place since last fall.
    — Lyz Lenz, Longreads, 18 May 2017
  • The album has been gestating for years, its release delayed more than once.
    — Danielle Amir Jackson Malike Sidibe, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Myriad life forms may gestate in a womb or sprout in soil, hatch from an egg or germinate in a corpse.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN, 12 May 2023
  • What’s more, cloning can be hard on the surrogate mother that gestates the cloned embryo.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 7 Apr. 2025
  • The two-bedroom house took two years to build, but some of its elements have been gestating for decades.
    — Mark Lamster, Dallas News, 7 Feb. 2020
  • There are signs Iweala knew his long-gestating novel had problems.
    — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2018
  • In the control group, eggs and sperm from healthy-weight mice were gestated in healthy-weight surrogates.
    — New Atlas, 16 Aug. 2025
  • The project gestated for seven years before reaching the screen.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 29 Mar. 2026
  • These animals gestate for about two weeks before giving birth to even smaller, live young.
    — Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Jan. 2023
  • So are there any other songs from the album that have been gestating for some time, and why did now seem the time to release them?
    — Bryan Kress, Billboard, 21 Feb. 2018
  • African elephants, for example, already gestate for about two years—during which much can go wrong.
    — Riley Black, Popular Science, 9 Nov. 2023
  • Coogler's reboot has been a long-gestating project for the award-winning filmmaker.
    — Mekishana Pierre, Entertainment Weekly, 23 Feb. 2026
  • That would be the end of the line for that mother, her gestating calf and ultimately the species itself.
    — Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Scientific American, 1 Mar. 2023
  • This approach has been gestating since the early days of computing.
    — Bankim Chandra, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2024
  • That is, the right enjoyed by women is a right to stop gestating, not a right to end the existence of the fetus.
    — Margot Cleveland, National Review, 31 July 2017
  • The long-gestating Sweet Valley High movie has moved on to its third writer.
    — Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 8 July 2019
  • The mothers will gestate their young for 13 months and the calf typically stays with its mother for up to two years.
    — Zoe Sottile, CNN, 5 Aug. 2023
  • Babies who gestated near a well had a reliably lower birth weight than their siblings who were not exposed to the well.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 13 Dec. 2017
  • Prime Video’s long-gestating God of War series has found its lead actor.
    — Rick Porter, HollywoodReporter, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Todd Haynes’ long-gestating gay love story De Noche has found its second wind.
    — Emlyn Travis, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Feb. 2026
  • Some of the demands have long been gestating and there’s plenty for the negotiators to get their teeth into.
    — Max Goldbart, Deadline, 1 July 2024
  • Plays usually gestate slowly, so even the most topical ones will make references that are years out of date.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2021
  • That seed of an idea gestated into Babes, in theaters May 17.
    — Gerrad Hall, EW.com, 10 May 2024
  • These characters have been gestating inside you.
    — Brent Lang, Variety, 5 Jan. 2026
  • The news that twins were gestating inside me had taken me weeks to absorb, and the sudden shift in my fate was disorienting.
    — Daniela Blei, The Cut, 23 Apr. 2018
  • According to the zoo, baby giraffes — which gestate for about 15 months — are already 6 feet tall when they are born.
    — Erin Clack, PEOPLE, 9 Nov. 2025
  • And in the gestational obesity group, eggs and sperm from healthy mice were gestated in obese surrogates.
    — New Atlas, 16 Aug. 2025

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