How to Use lamprey in a Sentence

lamprey

noun
  • By the nineteen-forties, lampreys could be found in all five lakes.
    — Katie Thornton, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Or luring lampreys into traps with pheromones.
    — Andrew Montequin, jsonline.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Other threats to lamprey control might be caused by the weather.
    — Andrew Montequin, jsonline.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • The idea was to stop the lampreys from getting upstream during their spring spawning run.
    — Katie Thornton, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • The good news, however, is that lamprey numbers are dropping some.
    — John Myers, Twin Cities, 13 Nov. 2019
  • The lamprey is a jawless, eel-like predator that lives in rivers and has been around for 360 million years.
    — Literary Hub, 13 May 2026
  • In a year, one lamprey can lay waste to about forty pounds of fish—twice as much as the average American eats.
    — Katie Thornton, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Many of the neurons that use dopamine reside in the basal ganglia which are nuclei located deep in the lamprey brain.
    — Literary Hub, 13 May 2026
  • To determine where to treat, federal workers must first figure out where the lampreys are.
    — Katie Thornton, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Other foods that hold spiritual and health values for tribes include lamprey, roots, berries and wild game.
    — Rocky Barker, idahostatesman, 8 July 2017
  • The lamprey stars in one of this book’s many fascinating vignettes of violence and mayhem—or the threat of it.
    — James Romm, WSJ, 12 Mar. 2021
  • The department says the larval lamprey live in freshwater for a few years burrowed in sandy substrate.
    — USA TODAY, 10 June 2019
  • Staff members, their hands protected with gloves, carefully lifted one of the lampreys and plopped it into a tall tank.
    — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 2 Dec. 2019
  • This allowed researchers to concoct a lamprey-specific poison that was pumped into key rivers and streams.
    — Dan Egan, jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • That includes salmon, steelhead, lampreys, other fish that normally call that river home.
    — Dana Taylor, USA TODAY, 23 Feb. 2024
  • This may help the lake steelheads recover from parasitic lampreys, which are widespread in that fresh water.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 1 June 2018
  • In their natural ranges, lampreys are important components of food webs.
    — Rachel Nuwer, New York Times, 8 Feb. 2016
  • That's about the time that our early vertebrate ancestors--lamprey-like jawless fishes--evolved the first fins.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2012
  • Pacific lamprey play key roles in tribal culture and ecology.
    — Mckayla Lee, oregonlive, 24 Aug. 2022
  • Scientists have come to understand the instinctual part of our brain in part by studying lampreys.
    — Nick Heil, Outside Online, 3 July 2018
  • Extensive studies have revealed that the lamprey has nerve cells which use dopamine as a neurotransmitter.
    — Literary Hub, 13 May 2026
  • Scans of the fossils showed that the creature’s teeth probably were made of keratin, just like lamprey teeth (and human fingernails).
    — Michael Greshko, National Geographic, 16 Mar. 2016
  • Fishermen are still catching trout out there with live lampreys attached to them, but some heavy stocking has been done, and the fishing continues to be fair.
    — Ben East, Outdoor Life, 28 Nov. 2024
  • This year, more than 2,600 lamprey were counted making the journey upriver to breed.
    — Kale Williams, OregonLive.com, 13 June 2018
  • Having explored its new environment, the lamprey settled onto the pebbles at the bottom of the tank.
    — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 2 Dec. 2019
  • None of the other techniques could ever match the effectiveness of these main controls, both in terms of cost and in keeping lamprey numbers down.
    — Andrew Montequin, jsonline.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Again, Seneca tells us that Augustus ordered Pollio’s crystal smashed and all his lamprey pools filled.
    — Iain Murray, National Review, 16 Dec. 2023
  • According to Johnson, that can help buy time before these tactics lose their efficacy and lampreys start to find ways to avoid them.
    — Andrew Montequin, jsonline.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Another shows some of the first male lamprey sterilizations in the 1980s.
    — Andrew Montequin, jsonline.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • These nuclei are extremely well conserved across different species through evolution, all the way from lampreys to humans.
    — Literary Hub, 13 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lamprey.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: