How to Use pinprick in a Sentence

pinprick

noun
  • He felt a pinprick in his leg.
  • Three of its moons can be seen as pinpricks of light on the left side.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2023
  • My face was raw and dotted with pinpricks of red, my eyes glassy and puffy.
    — Jillian Dunham, Longreads, 28 Jan. 2020
  • After all, the place is just a pinprick on a wall-sized map of the world.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 10 July 2023
  • Light from eclipse entered a pinprick hole in the foil, wrapped around the top of the box.
    — Peter Rowe, sandiegouniontribune.com, 21 Aug. 2017
  • All from a pinprick and the extraction of a small, but bloody meal.
    — Paul Richards, Field & Stream, 9 Nov. 2023
  • For even more chile-induce pinpricks, ask for a side of tangy salsa verde.
    — Cesar Hernandez, San Francisco Chronicle, 17 Apr. 2024
  • In the distance, two pinprick white lights emerge from the blackness.
    — James Nestor, Scientific American, 12 Feb. 2018
  • Every splash of rain, speck of dust, or pinprick of light could mar the negative.
    — Literary Hub, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The photo of Spears's right foot shows the wound, which looks like a pinprick with a bruise around it.
    — Maggie O'Neill, Health.com, 10 Sep. 2021
  • In the film, the impact appears as a pinprick flash of light on the edge of the planet’s round face.
    — Andrew Fazekas, National Geographic, 30 Mar. 2016
  • When glial cells were turned off via gene editing, the mice were less sensitive to pain such as pinpricks.
    — National Geographic, 9 Jan. 2020
  • Take Theranos, which pledged to perform tons of tests on just a pinprick of blood.
    — Rachel Becker, The Verge, 18 May 2018
  • Yet in the midst of all this bleakness, Barry still finds pinpricks of hope that the truth might set one free.
    — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 29 May 2023
  • The last hints of sunlight peeking through the valleys of the moon will make for pinpricks of brilliance.
    — Matthew Cappucci, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Apr. 2023
  • The heads of more recent scorpion species are adorned with multiple rows of beady, pinprick eyes.
    — Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Jan. 2020
  • People peered into the charcoal-gray night trying to keep the boat in sight and to spot a yellow-red pinprick.
    — Marguerite Holloway, The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2021
  • This image is just one-twentieth of the night sky, a mere pinprick of a window into the universe.
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 26 Apr. 2018
  • But then another lit up a pinprick of darkness, then another.
    — Leslie Barker, Dallas News, 29 June 2021
  • But for birds, this brave new world of intensification has meant death by a million pinpricks.
    — Tim Graham, National Geographic, 1 June 2018
  • One of Kitamura’s gifts, though, is to inject every scene with a pinprick of dread.
    — New York Times, 14 July 2021
  • Meanwhile, the North is in complete darkness, save for a tiny pinprick of light in Pyongyang.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 18 Feb. 2018
  • The next day, Megan noticed a small pinprick on her arm, surrounded by a bruise and paired with an ache that bothered her for a few days.
    — Matilda Martin, refinery29.com, 21 Oct. 2021
  • An avatar traverses an imaginary world when a brief pinprick of light appears on the monitor.
    — John Kang, Forbes.com, 3 Sep. 2025
  • How horrific, to be remembered only for one’s darkest moments, not a pinprick of hope cast over your corpse.
    — Lauren Puckett-Pope, ELLE, 29 Sep. 2022
  • These cameras need ways to peel faint pinpricks of light away from bright host stars, like finding a firefly sitting on the rim of a distant spotlight.
    — Joshua Sokol, WIRED, 28 May 2018
  • In the evening, a gigantic bowl with thousands of pinprick holes is inverted over the Earth—or so the thinking went.
    — TIME.com, 25 Oct. 2017
  • Vines cross your path, a leaf dances in a pinprick of sun, a patch of turbid water like polished gunmetal promises a clearing in the distance.
    — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 24 Jan. 2024
  • These are the nerve cells that respond to painful stimuli like a pinch, a pinprick, a hot stove or a chemical irritant such as a chili pepper.
    — Karen Weintraub, USA Today, 11 Dec. 2022
  • Pinpricks of red light appeared like beady mouse eyes in the woods, evidence of bushwhackers braving the poison ivy for a closer look.
    — Andrea Sachs, chicagotribune.com, 15 June 2017

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