How to Use potentiality in a Sentence

potentiality

noun
  • There was no discussion of what use, if any, to make of my new potentiality.
    — Joseph O’Neill, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
  • This is a negative freedom that does not expand one’s sense of self so much as shrink it to pure potentiality.
    — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
  • On foot, there are no boundaries in the land, no divides, nothing but the past and the potentiality of the future.
    — Michael McColly, Chicago Tribune, 24 Aug. 2025
  • Each figure played a key role in shaping an evocative notion of the region’s sense of potentiality.
    — Lynell George, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2019
  • The modern day loan system is botched, and needs addressing if prodigious young talents are to reach their full potentialities.
    — SI.com, 15 Apr. 2017
  • That could also determine whether there are charges in connection with the other statutes there -- potentiality (ph).
    — ABC News, 28 Aug. 2022
  • The younger generations tend to be the most concerned about the potentiality of AI stepping on their toes.
    — Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 24 Nov. 2024
  • And where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater.
    — NBC news, 12 Oct. 2025
  • But that year’s election centered mostly on style, policy, and potentiality.
    — Michael Szalma, Orlando Sentinel, 10 Nov. 2024
  • But that potentiality feels nascent in Slater’s current rendering of the part rather than fully acknowledged and explored.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Somewhere between the billionaires and the flameouts, there are less dramatic potentialities.
    — Vauhini Vara, WIRED, 23 May 2017
  • Life becomes fuller, richer, but also, in one important arena, decided, and robbed of enticing potentialities.
    — Thomas Swick, Longreads, 5 July 2018
  • Closely aligned to potentiality, virtual referred to the internal, but as yet unexpressed, capacities of a thing.
    — Jacob Brogan, Slate Magazine, 1 Sep. 2017
  • Canter also acknowledged how other decisions could impact the potentiality of some of his players returning.
    — Nick Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 Feb. 2025
  • The net effect of this case is to increase the potentiality for totalitarianism in America.
    — Norman Mailer, Daily Intelligencer, 30 June 2017
  • Possibly, but entwined with this theme of curiosity is the potentiality that these tales are begging readers to also consider the importance of obedience and trust.
    — Sarah Schutte, National Review, 12 Sep. 2021
  • The year 1947 did mark a tipping point between the savagery of the immediate past and the tentative stirrings of postwar potentialities.
    — Dagmar Herzog, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Stimson, while emphasizing the peace-time potentiality of the new force, made clear that much research must be undertaken to effect full peacetime application of its principles.
    — Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Aug. 2023
  • If Vietnam damaged the credibility of experts, experts were no more inclined to value the democratic potentialities of the public.
    — Daniel Bessner, Foreign Affairs, 5 Apr. 2017
  • The film is set in 2029, a mere three years from now, demonstrating both an optimism about the potentiality of AI and a pessimism about the city’s trajectory.
    — Frank Scheck, HollywoodReporter, 21 Jan. 2026
  • Dolfino explained his interest in the education industry in this way stems from the potentialities higher education often affords.
    — Steven Aquino, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2023
  • And there is also an undercurrent of resentment that newcomers should be telling veteran ranchers about the potentialities of the land in southern Wasco County.
    — David Sarasohn, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2018
  • Marco Silva is the astute mind that can turn potentiality into actuality, especially with the talent littering his squad.
    — SI.com, 6 June 2019
  • Meanwhile, parsing-of-totality depends on advancing sensing techniques to harness atoms’ deeper patterns and potentiality.
    — Pravir Malik, Forbes, 4 Dec. 2024
  • Additionally, with the expansion of the tournament from 32 teams to 48 teams, this debate has caught alight with the potentiality of seeing an increase in teams of lesser quality.
    — SI.com, 2 July 2018
  • In a striking parallel to the 1990s, epochal thinking about the potentialities of a high technology society has once again upended politics.
    — Jacob Bruggeman & Casey Eilbert / Made By History, TIME, 3 Mar. 2025
  • Is academic jargon verily so problematical vis-à-vis its labyrinthine potentialities qua trans-resistive reactionings?
    — Rebecca Schuman, Slate Magazine, 26 Jan. 2017
  • Slime is a reoccurring motif in Heaney’s work, characterizing the unstable nature of all things and the self and symbolising potentiality and transformation.
    — Lee Sharrock, Forbes, 25 Nov. 2024
  • Practically, then, the translator reads with an eye to understanding the affordances offered by a text—to re-creating its potentialities, rather than merely offering a lexical equivalent.
    — Max Norman, The New Yorker, 7 Dec. 2024
  • My moral object, therefore, is to attempt to direct the efforts of men toward the clear appreciation of reality, exposing the illusory in order that man may realize his creative potentialities.
    — Andrew Aoyama, The Atlantic, 28 Feb. 2024

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