How to Use mandible in a Sentence

mandible

noun
  • Fire ants use their mandibles (jaws) just to latch on to your skin.
    — Dennis Pillion | [email protected], AL.com, 20 Aug. 2017
  • The strip steak will exhaust the most resilient of mandibles.
    — Jenn Harris, Los Angeles Times, 22 July 2024
  • Their legs and mandibles may vary in lighter brown or orange colors.
    — Jane Kim, The Spruce, 24 May 2026
  • The front ants bent their legs and pulled hard at the leaf tip with their mandibles while the rear ants held the leaf still.
    — Rohini Subrahmanyam, Scientific American, 29 Sep. 2025
  • His fingers splayed and writhed like a terrible mandible.
    — Douglas Stuart, New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2026
  • The jawbone is part of an adult mandible, but its height points to a person of short stature and small body size.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 6 June 2018
  • By March, crews found the mandible of an adult man, followed within days by the ribs of a young adult.
    — Lucas Robinson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Apr. 2026
  • But termites, with their strong, sharp mandibles, aren’t easy prey, and raiders often get limbs bitten off in the fight.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 14 Feb. 2018
  • After Lavin complained of pain in his jaw, X-rays showed there was a hole in his mandible.
    — John Maffei, sandiegouniontribune.com, 4 May 2017
  • At first, researchers tried to extract DNA from the mandible.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Apr. 2025
  • The bees soon cut several holes in the leaves of each plant using their mandibles and proboscises.
    — Jim Daley, Scientific American, 21 May 2020
  • Still, all the extra weight and much larger mandibles are probably worth something.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 29 Aug. 2023
  • Others, like the trap-jaw ant, use their mandibles to catapult themselves to safety.
    — National Geographic, 19 Apr. 2018
  • The skull and a mandible — a jawbone — were the only remains recovered.
    — Ryan Brennan, Sacbee.com, 7 Apr. 2026
  • Ant throwdowns involve the use of their sharp mandibles, and can even leave a bad taste in their mouths, literally.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 8 Jan. 2025
  • Scorpionflies use those deadly looking mandibles to feed on dead insects.
    — Steve Bender, Southern Living, 21 May 2026
  • The cave is part of a quarry, where the first mandible was discovered in 1969.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 7 Jan. 2026
  • The teeth mandible and humerus are all smaller than those found at Liang Bua, Kaifu says.
    — Jeanna Bryner, Scientific American, 7 Aug. 2024
  • Even in a single hole of a mandible, there are up to six generations of bees coming back to that same single hole.
    — Taylor Nicioli, CNN Money, 17 Dec. 2025
  • In March, a man’s mandible was found, followed a few days later by the finger bone of a young girl and the ribs of a young adult.
    — Lucas Robinson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Fitzjames’ mandible is also one of the bones exhibiting multiple cut marks.
    — Ars Technica, 30 Sep. 2024
  • Carpenter bees Black thumb-sized carpenter bees with shiny abdomens and strong mandibles.
    — The Arizona Republic, 14 Feb. 2024
  • The museum currently has a right mandible from a right whale, which was found in 1907.
    — USA TODAY, 1 July 2019
  • The animal dislodged the boy’s mandible, left a groove in his skull, broke his clavicle and left a bite mark on his right ankle.
    — Sara Novak, Scientific American, 27 Jan. 2026
  • The head is a compact black bullet from which emerge long thick spikes of hair, two segmented antennae, and clamp-like mandibles.
    — Daisy Alioto, The New York Review of Books, 27 Mar. 2020
  • The fossil, a mandible for chewing, was first discovered in 1980 by a monk.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 6 May 2019
  • Dawson broke off parts of the orangutan mandible that would reveal a poor fit with the human skull, and reshaped the teeth with a metal file.
    — Daniel T. Ksepka, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2023
  • Trap-jaw ants use spring actuation to launch their mandibles to capture prey, while grasshoppers use their springy legs to kick away predators.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 28 Aug. 2023
  • While Janzen can’t say if the jewel’s goo is toxic or not, the stuff can gum up the mandibles of something like an attacking ant.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 30 Oct. 2015
  • These high-confidence marks were located on four tibiae, one mandible, one humerus, and two long bone fragments.
    — Jack Knudson, Discover Magazine, 23 Jan. 2025

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