How to Use inefficient in a Sentence

inefficient

adjective
  • The delivery system was very inefficient.
  • The sap from plants can also leave these tools sticky and inefficient when put to use.
    — Mary Marlowe Leverette, The Spruce, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Cameron was inefficient from the start.
    — Kansas City Star, 25 June 2026
  • And who wants an inefficient clean?
    — Lauren Wicks, Southern Living, 24 Nov. 2025
  • Gay hit some big shots for the Spurs but was inefficient in his shooting.
    — Jeff McDonald, San Antonio Express-News, 19 May 2021
  • The city used some inefficient and ugly chain link fencing at the trail head.
    — Mary Forgione, Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2022
  • This was a very expensive and inefficient way to run an army.
    — NBC News, 4 June 2019
  • This was a very expensive and inefficient way to run an army.
    — Rebecca Santana, baltimoresun.com, 6 June 2019
  • The process was too inefficient a use of the country’s gas supply.
    — Washington Post, 21 Apr. 2022
  • On top of that, passive learning tends to be slow and inefficient.
    — Aytekin Tank, Forbes, 5 Nov. 2024
  • Using one that’s old and worn out will be inefficient at best and give you a rash or razor burn at worst.
    — Megan Gustashaw, Glamour, 29 Apr. 2025
  • Auburn’s offense was inefficient in the program’s worst home loss in a decade.
    — Tom Green | [email protected], al, 18 Sep. 2022
  • Using one that’s old and worn out will at best be inefficient and, at worst, give you a rash or razor burn.
    — Megan Gustashaw, Glamour, 29 Apr. 2025
  • Rublev is not the first player to use his body as a highly inefficient smashing post.
    — James Hansen, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2026
  • But there aren’t as many guards who take a lot of inefficient shots, and big plodding centers no longer clog the floor.
    — Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • In the first halves of the games in this stretch, the offense has been brutally inefficient and sparse.
    — Jannelle Moore, Mercury News, 16 Feb. 2026
  • Old leaves that were shaded, diseased and inefficient for the plant turned yellow and were shed.
    — oregonlive, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Go much faster, and the drag can make a sedan as inefficient as an SUV.
    — Camila Domonoske, NPR, 7 Apr. 2026
  • Those who expect their old workflows to stay the same, even if those systems were inefficient.
    — Asaf Darash, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
  • But both ways can be slow, expensive and inefficient.
    — Eric Sullivan, Scientific American, 6 Feb. 2026
  • That would put pressure on states to spend or lose the funding, which could lead to some bad, or at least inefficient, choices.
    — Raymond Scheppach, Quartz, 9 July 2021
  • That would put pressure on states to spend or lose the funding, which could lead to some bad, or at least inefficient, choices.
    — Raymond Scheppach, The Conversation, 7 July 2021
  • The result is inefficient on scale.
    — Ethan Pham, Forbes.com, 15 May 2026
  • Too tight and the wagon is hopelessly inefficient, too loose and the wheel wobbles and breaks apart.
    — Cody Cassidy, Wired, 6 May 2020
  • Concerns that their process is inefficient have been a constant theme since the group first began mapping.
    — Clara Hendrickson, Detroit Free Press, 17 Sep. 2021
  • Many of these cuts were necessary to rein in a bloated, inefficient and spendthrift state.
    — Hanna Ziady, CNN, 10 Dec. 2024
  • Like intuiting the next stage of the story, which takes time and is inefficient.
    — Literary Hub, 10 Feb. 2026
  • The group concluded that the sawn tooth was an early, if inefficient, form of dentistry.
    — Lizzie Wade, Science | AAAS, 2 July 2018
  • This model is truly the most inefficient policing model in the free world.
    — Art Acevedo, CNN, 2 June 2022
  • But the rollout of the vaccines has been criticized as slow and inefficient.
    — Jonathan Saltzman, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Feb. 2021

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