How to Use lope in a Sentence

lope

1 of 2 noun
  • Horses used the warning track to stretch their legs, ranging from a walk to a trot, maybe even a lope.
    — Kirk Kenney, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Jan. 2024
  • In between construction sites, Riddle turned his head to watch a coyote lope across the road.
    — Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 29 June 2022
  • The latter has an easy lope made menacing by a cartoon-alien zap answered by other machines that caw like birds.
    — Michaelangelo Matos, Rolling Stone, 16 Aug. 2025
  • Reum, a boyish and buoyant Midwesterner in navy sweats, lopes into the room to check on his wife.
    — Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 14 Mar. 2023
  • The earring is designed to follow the shape — the comet penetrates the ear with the tail being the twist clasp behind the lope.
    — Angela Lei, Forbes, 24 June 2021
  • As the opening track lopes and sways in a midtempo groove, listeners slowly come around to the idea that the first track is also the only track.
    — Geoff Dyer, New York Times, 4 Oct. 2017
  • Deep in the Singing Spruce Forest bear hunters unsnapped their rifles and began the long lope home.
    — Charna Flam, People.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • The pop mélange builds to a lope then decelerates for the chorus, all while retaining enormous swagger.
    — Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY, 12 May 2023
  • There’s still the lope of hillbilly music—the steady one-two, one-two striding across the song’s landscape—but inside that is this tight dance beat.
    — Longreads, 26 Oct. 2017
  • That impression is compounded when a lone wolf lopes into the frame, the blood on its snout indicating a recent kill.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 25 Feb. 2023
  • Kaytranada’s signature beat, halfway between the pulse of house and the drunken lope of J Dilla, rarely lets up.
    — Daniel Bromfield, SPIN, 7 June 2024
  • There are dancers and puppets, including six life-size celestial horses who suddenly gain their freedom and lope off across the clouds to celebrate.
    — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Nov. 2025
  • Guitar chords open this track, but within a few measures, Watts drops in with his comforting bass-snare-and-high-hat lope that deservedly stays high in the mix throughout.
    — Marco Della Cava, USA TODAY, 24 Aug. 2021
  • Brown lopes across the playground as a police radio crackles and a gaggle of kids watch, probably expecting the tall officer to land in a heap in the playground’s mulch.
    — Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post, 3 July 2018
  • The tall West Virginian, though noted for an occasional dubious story, can trail a gnat through a ticker-tape parade at a dead lope.
    — Jim Moore, Outdoor Life, 8 Oct. 2025
  • The song may be six minutes long, but the circuitous lope of his acoustic-guitar strum and low throb of his warbling feel eternal, like the type of tune Sisyphus might have hummed to keep himself company.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2025
  • While the ride is comfortable and the car lopes along the highway unperturbed at 90 mph, the trip is accompanied by a bit of tire roar, which can become annoying on extended drives.
    — James Lipman, Car and Driver, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Sheridan’s dialogue shares the pleasurable, easy lope of Larry McMurtry, who has written evocatively of the West’s past and present.
    — Mary Kaye Schilling, Newsweek, 28 July 2017
  • Recounting this memory at the house in Braddock, Fetterman pauses our conversation and lopes back to the bedroom to retrieve the Post-its.
    — Molly Ball, Time, 20 July 2023
  • At other times, the 6-foot-4 professional gambler lopes, shoulders slightly hunched, through gaming areas and steps onto elevators -- the ordinariness of his movements camouflaging his dark aims.
    — Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, 22 Mar. 2018

lope

2 of 2 verb
  • He went loping up the hill.
  • The outfielder loped after the ball.
  • The horses loped easily across the fields.
  • The bear sprung to its feet and loped about 15 yards, then fell over dead.
    — Tyler Freel, Outdoor Life, 25 May 2023
  • Perry has been loping around the world on this tour for four months.
    — Melissa Ruggieri, USA Today, 11 Aug. 2025
  • Ahead of her a coyote loped across the street with something in its mouth.
    — Hazlitt, 30 Aug. 2023
  • On my way back to the pew, the guilt was still there, loping doggedly at my side.
    — Peter Hessler, New Yorker, 31 May 2026
  • The car is comfy when loping along and predictable when wrung out.
    — Sam Smith, Car and Driver, 25 Aug. 2023
  • This addictive, loping track is one of the best and strangest songs from the artist’s fifth album.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 7 Nov. 2025
  • The other two shots were right at the rim, while the Hawkeyes hit a loping 3-pointer.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2026
  • How much of the floor could his team cover if no one ever loped back on defense and gave the other team space to breathe?
    — Cj Moore, The Athletic, 8 Jan. 2025
  • With his long, loping stride and easy smile, Gout Gout has the charisma to turn into a world star.
    — Cory Mull, Forbes.com, 7 May 2025
  • In the distance, the Mustang Mountains loped across the horizon.
    — Gina Decaprio Vercesi, Travel + Leisure, 27 Oct. 2023
  • Alek Shrader maintains his tenoral cool while having to lope around the stage as half-man, half-gorilla.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 8 Aug. 2017
  • Grooves swing, lope and gallop, while Chris Desiderio’s distorted, spacey guitar leads stab in and out.
    — Michael Hamad, courant.com, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Beyond that, the show is mostly content to amble along, loping toward the green and from time to time indulging in odd bits of nonsense.
    — Tom Gliatto, People.com, 4 June 2025
  • That huge, thin-rimmed steering wheel makes low-speed maneuvers easy despite the lack of assistance, and the car has a lovely, loping ride.
    — Ben Oliver, Robb Report, 8 June 2026
  • One likes to imagine Paleo Dad loping across the savannah in hot pursuit of a wooly mammoth.
    — Inga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Sep. 2025
  • When your eyes take in the space as a whole, a fetching panorama appears where tigers seem to lope seamlessly between the cushion tapestry and the wall paintings.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Jan. 2026
  • The engine is original but for a century of maintenance and use, and a tall overdrive gear has been added to let the car lope easily on open highway.
    — Mark Ewing, Forbes, 3 July 2022
  • Matheny will play an opening set, then strap on a bass and contribute to Miller’s relaxed, loping country-rock sound.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 12 July 2023
  • The little truck can launch off the line after chirping all four tires, but also cruises comfortably thanks to smooth transmission shift points that keep the engine at a low, loping idle.
    — Michael Teo Van Runkle, Forbes, 14 Dec. 2024
  • Soon Flora Bundy will return for her second witness interview and a lion or two may lope through the den, checking on how the inquiry is going.
    — Anne Carson, Harper's magazine, 10 June 2019
  • Camels appeared, strolling elegantly in loping slow motion, like elderly promenaders.
    — Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 Mar. 2024
  • Burnett has an associative, loping way of holding conversation.
    — Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 14 June 2025
  • Stubby hind legs increase energy efficiency, allowing the animals to lope easily across the ground.
    — Christine Dell'amore, National Geographic, 14 June 2019
  • Got a perfect match from Chris Richards, the Afro-rocking defender with the long, loping strides, who was 83 for 83 on his passes.
    — Mirjam Swanson, Los Angeles Times, 13 June 2026
  • And the effort required to lope stiff-legged across the powdery surface guzzled the air and cooling water in his backpack, limiting his time outside the relative safety of the lunar module.
    — Outside Online, 23 June 2021
  • The loping ball hung in the air forever, only for DK Metcalf to come down with a particularly acrobatic grab.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, The Athletic, 8 Jan. 2025
  • The gray wolf that made headlines in 2011 for becoming the first lobo in nearly a century to lope in California’s wilderness is presumed dead.
    — Suzanne Espinosa Solis, SFChronicle.com, 15 Apr. 2020

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