How to Use proportional in a Sentence

proportional

adjective
  • The features of the face in the drawing are proportional.
  • There just won’t be that many people around, proportional to space.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 4 Mar. 2026
  • The head is the same, but the neck is a bit longer to make the robot more proportional overall.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 8 Mar. 2023
  • The change in electrical current is proportional to the amount of gas in the air.
    — Lorraine Wilde, Treehugger, 7 June 2023
  • Inertia is proportional to a body's mass, or the amount of matter that a body has.
    — John S. Tobey, Forbes, 13 Oct. 2021
  • The size of each square is proportional to the approximate area of each place.
    — New York Times, 10 Aug. 2021
  • If the baby had a proportional, standard body, the mother won a point.
    — Laura Vazquez, Harpers Magazine, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Its lithe profile is proportional and doesn’t look boxy, given its volume.
    — Michael Verdon, Robb Report, 10 Mar. 2022
  • Putting a piece on either generates a new piece on the other that is proportional. Pick the shape up with your mouse, then place it on a grid made of black-and-white squares.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 22 Apr. 2022
  • The rebates aren’t targeted to need or proportional to gas use.
    — Dominic Pino, National Review, 25 Mar. 2022
  • Avoiding a cat can be proportional to dragon-style boss battles.
    — Pearse Anderson, Wired, 9 Sep. 2021
  • If two shapes are similar, the angle measures are the same and the side lengths are proportional.
    — Mark Wolfmeyer, Popular Mechanics, 25 May 2022
  • Levin said the wealthy need to pay a proportional share of their income into the safety-net program.
    — Lucas Robinson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Aug. 2025
  • Their shares are proportional to the size of their residential units.
    — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 9 Dec. 2025
  • The proportional increase is less than the male fighting force, which has more than tripled over the same period.
    — Maria Varenikova, New York Times, 8 Nov. 2023
  • This approach takes time proportional to the number of boxes.
    — Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 20 July 2023
  • Bar width is proportional to the age group’s share of the total population.
    — New York Times, 30 Nov. 2021
  • Israel has launched a counter strike into Palestine, which has reached a proportional death toll there as well.
    — Jenny Goldsberry, Washington Examiner, 8 Oct. 2023
  • So in a five-seat district, each voter gets five votes instead of only one vote in a proportional system.
    — Jennifer Lynn McCoy, The Conversation, 11 Feb. 2026
  • In this case, the entropy is proportional to the three-dimensional volume of the box, not the area.
    — Edgar Shaghoulian, Scientific American, 22 Aug. 2022
  • Some men might just carry excess fat in their breasts, so exercise can help to reduce the area down to a more proportional size.
    — Lara Rosenbaum, Men's Health, 25 Jan. 2023
  • The key lesson clients need to learn is what constitutes an acceptable risk proportional to their wealth.
    — Todd Longwell, Variety, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Fs = -kx) states that the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance is proportional to that distance.
    — WIRED, 22 Nov. 2022
  • As its name suggests, this means that each electoral group or party receives a number of seats that is proportional to its share of the vote.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 14 Oct. 2022
  • Ensure the height of the lamp is proportional to the height of the end table, and the overall size is to scale with the rest of the furniture.
    — Sophie Flaxman, Better Homes & Gardens, 15 Aug. 2025
  • The weakness of Russia’s claimed just cause means that this war cannot be considered proportional.
    — Valerie Morkevicius, The Conversation, 5 Mar. 2022
  • Balance your outfit Always pair loose items with form-fitting items for a proportional look.
    — Parents Editors, Parents, 13 June 2023
  • That’s in part because of how much fuel is used in fishing boats proportional to the end-product amount of protein obtained.
    — Time, 12 Jan. 2023
  • If no one reaches this threshold, then the delegates will be split up among candidates proportional to the statewide vote.
    — Rachel Schilke, Washington Examiner, 30 July 2023
  • Shareholders own a number of shares that are proportional to the size of their residential units.
    — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 21 Nov. 2025

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