How to Use lights-out in a Sentence

lights-out

noun
  • No wake-up bell or lights-out hour.
    — Lydia Mansel, Southern Living, 28 May 2026
  • Our defense has been playing lights-out all season.
    — Jerry McDonald, Mercury News, 4 Jan. 2026
  • The days when the offense looks the most anemic are the same days when the pitching is lights-out.
    — Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News, 28 May 2024
  • The team is stacked with solid shooters, but nobody is lights-out this season.
    — Jared Weiss, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2026
  • For Gay, leaving the church wasn’t a simple lights-out moment.
    — H. Alan Scott, MSNBC Newsweek, 26 Nov. 2025
  • The sketch wasn’t lights-out amazing, but the switcheroo was interesting.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 15 Sep. 2025
  • Thompson’s lights-out performance wasn’t even the highlight of his night.
    — Lamond Pope, Chicago Tribune, 21 June 2024
  • The Gators were lights-out in the second half against the Terrapins.
    — Chris Branch, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
  • Sam Hauser joined Brown in the spotlight with his lights-out shooting.
    — Greg Dudek, Boston Herald, 18 Jan. 2026
  • Florida came out shooting lights-out from the beginning of the game.
    — Edward Lee, Baltimore Sun, 16 May 2024
  • By the time lights-out finally comes, the exhausted patient conks out hard.
    — Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • The Tigers have been lights-out defensively just about every week.
    — Tyler Everett, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Oct. 2025
  • Sexton has developed into a lights-out shooter and works hard on defense.
    — Sam Vecenie, New York Times, 26 June 2025
  • With a big helping hand from Shohei Ohtani and a lights-out bullpen, that’s exactly what the Dodgers did.
    — Houston Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, 26 Sep. 2024
  • Halladay was lights-out the rest of the way, allowing only four more hits in finishing eight innings.
    — Tim Britton, New York Times, 30 May 2025
  • The Phillies had a strong rotation, a lights-out closer, and a lineup that had a good balance of power and on-base threat.
    — Nelson Espinal, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Dec. 2025
  • After some miscues earlier in the game, Jackson was lights-out on the Ravens’ final drive.
    — Kevin Dotson, CNN, 19 Jan. 2025
  • Jones is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none by NBA standards who will need to be a lights-out shooter to stick.
    — Sam Vecenie, New York Times, 26 June 2026
  • Just some consistent Dodgers offense, coupled with more dominance from a lights-out pitching staff.
    — Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2024
  • Kat’s goal was to keep me awake but unstimulated, so that when lights-out finally came, I’d be primed for deep, solid sleep.
    — Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • And the second unit has enjoyed lights-out stretches from Landry Shamet and Miles McBride.
    — Esfandiar Baraheni, New York Times, 3 June 2026
  • Does that make Suárez, who had another great season this year and has always been lights-out in the playoffs, the most expendable of the three?
    — Jackson Roberts, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Dec. 2025
  • The Thunder have been lights-out from a drafting and player-development standpoint in recent years.
    — Bryan Toporek, Forbes.com, 11 July 2025
  • For someone with sleep-onset insomnia, Kat says, lights-out might have come earlier, and the scheme would have been different.
    — Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Quieter thoughts, less resistance at lights-out and the kind of rest that actually makes tomorrow easier.
    — Allison Palmer, Charlotte Observer, 23 Apr. 2026
  • The most exciting part of the Singapore Grand Prix was the start—that lights-out moment when anything can happen.
    — Rob Reed, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2024
  • In the coming years voters will have to grapple with those changes and determine new benchmarks, both for the lights-out aces whose arms couldn’t hold up and the steady workhorses who rarely missed a start.
    — Mac Cerullo, Boston Herald, 25 Jan. 2026
  • The Celtics responded with a lights-out three-point performance in Game 5, but the Knicks ended the series in six.
    — Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 9 Mar. 2026
  • The other new contender is the Colts’ Taylor, who just had one of those lights-out, history-defining kind of games on Sunday.
    — Hannah Vanbiber, New York Times, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Or Francisco Rodriguez and Troy Percival, leaders of a lights-out bullpen.
    — Jim Alexander, Oc Register, 17 Apr. 2026

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