How to Use inadequacy in a Sentence

inadequacy

noun
  • That's just there to mask the inadequacy.
    — Vanessa Etienne, People.com, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Guilt, fear and inadequacy are strong weapons used against mothers.
    — Atlanta Life, ajc, 12 May 2017
  • Her journals are filled with comments about the inadequacies of her wardrobe.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
  • Yet there’s more to their incoming title win than the inadequacies of those around them.
    — Gregg Evans, New York Times, 20 Apr. 2025
  • Defined in terms of inadequacy, an accent becomes not a feature of your speech but a flaw.
    — Sheon Han, The New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Many are haunted by the fear that this inadequacy is personal and doesn’t affect their peers.
    — Neil Howe, Fortune, 18 July 2023
  • That can lead to feelings of inadequacy and not measuring up.
    — Monique Judge, The Root, 8 Feb. 2018
  • Nor did the new signs of success and acceptance ease her feelings of inadequacy.
    — Douglass K. Daniel, SFChronicle.com, 31 Dec. 2019
  • What really moved me is how much that shame and inadequacy had bled into different parts of their life.
    — Laura Beck, Cosmopolitan, 28 May 2017
  • That said, your worst enemy might be your feelings of inadequacy on the subject.
    — Chicago Tribune, 12 Nov. 2022
  • More than a few members attributed their crimes to a kind of consumerist inadequacy.
    — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 23 Aug. 2021
  • Any feelings of inadequacy were short-lived, however; for Foy there was more work to do.
    — Adam Rathe, Town & Country, 6 Sep. 2017
  • But it’s all driven by the same fear of their own inadequacies manifesting as fear for their own gender.
    — Alex Ritman, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Feb. 2023
  • And as Shah tries to land the role, public scrutiny and feelings of inadequacy well up.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 27 Mar. 2026
  • In fact, his solution to Beth's feelings of inadequacy was to hire her for his campaign team.
    — Christopher Rosa, Glamour, 28 Nov. 2018
  • Those feelings of inadequacy and frustration, for the kids out back making a porno, spell trouble.
    — Jake Coyle, Chron, 16 Mar. 2022
  • One of the biggest knocks on the Seaport is the inadequacy of public transit.
    — Jon Chesto, BostonGlobe.com, 17 Jan. 2020
  • Despite his good fortune, Brad is stressed about the future and plagued by feelings of inadequacy.
    — Jon Frosch, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Maybe when that mortar comes to live in my kitchen cupboard, my longing will outweigh my fear of inadequacy and will propel me to practice.
    — Kristina Kasparian, Longreads, 12 Nov. 2024
  • Were the proprietors dressing their meat up in the culinary garb of other cultures to hide some inadequacy?
    — Andy Staples, SI.com, 30 June 2017
  • That’s a feeling of inadequacy that not only infests Ruben’s mind, but Niall’s as well.
    — Barry Levitt, Time, 29 May 2026
  • Kerr has been nagged ever since by the inadequacy of science, and of language, to fully capture the mysteries of the mind.
    — Phoebe Zerwick, New York Times, 12 Mar. 2024
  • The inadequacy of this system is evident from the very nature of the rules established to enforce it.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 26 June 2023
  • The aid effort has laid bare the inadequacy of the defense industrial base to replenish those weapons stocks.
    — Katherine Doyle, NBC news, 4 July 2025
  • This scenario happens all the time, and it is often perceived as a failure by the previous coach or inadequacy by the players.
    — Tony Bradley, Forbes, 26 May 2021
  • That said, the sheer size of the Atlantic Ocean and the inadequacy of the technology of the time stalled the search for the wreck for years.
    — Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 17 Feb. 2023
  • The man who dove in this very weekend, head-first into the deep end that is Arsenal's abyss of defensive inadequacies.
    — SI.com, 16 Sep. 2019
  • In addition to heating inadequacies, the agency has a history of failing to rid its apartments of mold and lead paint.
    — New York Times, 17 Oct. 2019
  • His goal is to reveal the inadequacy of the current strategy of the left to break out of the constrictive framework that the right has erected around them.
    — Clio Chang, New Republic, 22 June 2017
  • The response is further evidence of the inadequacy of the lists that dioceses have released.
    — Lexi Churchill, ProPublica, 3 Feb. 2020

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