How to Use proximal in a Sentence

proximal

adjective
  • Some of these places are proximal to towns and cities, and some are not.
    — Deboki Chakravarti, Scientific American, 27 Aug. 2021
  • Still, care has to be proximal to a shelter for people to use it, physicians say.
    — Melanie Grayce West, WSJ, 26 Jan. 2019
  • The best-case scenario is a proximal long head of biceps tendon tear.
    — Profootballdoc, sandiegouniontribune.com, 11 Sep. 2017
  • The eyeballs may be off-limits for touching, but the parts of the face most proximal to the eyes are not.
    — Mark Changizi, Discover Magazine, 10 Apr. 2012
  • Pain in central, proximal muscles like the shoulder and thighs are more likely to be caused by a statin.
    — Sumathi Reddy, WSJ, 31 July 2017
  • If the Big Ten picks off one or two of the refugee programs, that adds a couple more proximal rivals to the mix.
    — Nathan Baird, cleveland, 29 July 2023
  • The further out one is known as the interphalangeal joint because your toe has two bones, the distal and the proximal phalanges.
    — Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The sense of eeriness is probably a form of instinct that protects us from proximal, rather than distal, sources of danger.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 12 June 2012
  • These range from random chance to more proximal causes, like specific weather patterns that promote drought or floods.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 9 Jan. 2018
  • Even so, a container ship to a whale may sound like a speaker-proximal seat at a rock concert—and though the fan has chosen to be that close to the clamor, the whale has not.
    — Marguerite Holloway, The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2021
  • After six months in space, the proximal femoral bone in the leg can ditch around 10 percent of its mass, requiring years of recovery back on the ground.
    — Sarah Scoles, Wired, 9 Nov. 2021
  • Panoptic and stern, the statue’s function was made clear in its position proximal to the former location of a whipping post.
    — Gillet Rosenblith, Slate Magazine, 23 June 2017
  • The common element was that the sites were miles from the central business district but still (with the exception of Raleigh) proximal to a rail line.
    — Conor Dougherty, New York Times, 31 Oct. 2020
  • Upon vaginal anesthetization, the electric waves were recorded proximal but not distal to the anesthetized area.
    — Ncbi Rofl, Discover Magazine, 4 Dec. 2010
  • Master recalls that this idea wasn’t exactly met with enthusiasm in the proximal space industry.
    — Sarah Scoles, Wired, 10 Dec. 2020
  • How does the Big 3 and proximal stiffness relate to athletic performance?
    — Greg Presto, Men's Health, 14 July 2022
  • Instead only the most distal ones are homologous to digit bones; the proximal radials are homologous to the wrist bones and the long bones of the palm.
    — John A. Long, Scientific American, 20 May 2020
  • That consists of cutting the tendon from its insertion into the shoulder and reattaching it to the proximal shoulder in a new location.
    — Profootballdoc, sandiegouniontribune.com, 17 Dec. 2017
  • It was found that young children have not yet fully developed their motor skills and therefore tend to rotate objects using the proximal or middle phalanges of a finger.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 Mar. 2023
  • He and Bogdan Bogdanović (proximal hamstring tendon tear) will be limited to begin training camp.
    — Law Murray, New York Times, 30 Sep. 2025
  • An open dislocation of the PIP (proximal interphalageal joint, the middle joint on the finger) is most common.
    — Profootballdoc, sandiegouniontribune.com, 18 Jan. 2018
  • This extends the capability of the hand and enables in-place rotation or proximal/distal transfer, for the fine positioning of objects within the gripper workspace.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 14 Mar. 2023
  • The most proximal market, according to investors, is probably the development of manufacturing in near-Earth orbit, on space stations.
    — Clive Thompson, The New Republic, 3 Dec. 2020
  • One unfortunate by-product of these studies is a general misunderstanding of how extraordinarily good things are today relative to even the proximal past.
    — Michael Hicks, Indianapolis Star, 24 June 2018
  • Furious downslope winds were also the proximal culprit in that disaster, but the unusually dry vegetation conditions facilitated the fire’s rapid spread in the first place.
    — Daniel Swain, Outside Online, 11 Jan. 2022
  • Regions of the brain that interpret information about taste, as part of the gustatory system, are anatomically proximal to the primary olfactory cortex, which processes smells.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2023
  • Fourteen-year-old Gianna was born with proximal femoral focal deficiency, a condition affecting the femur bone that typically results in one leg being shorter than another.
    — Luca Evans, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2022
  • But with congenital radioulnar synostosis, a bony bridge forms between the two instead, connecting them together due to underdevelopment of the proximal joint, which connects the radius and ulna bones at the elbow.
    — Sarah Valenzuela, SELF, 9 Nov. 2018
  • Training uses the proximal policy optimization algorithm.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 16 Jan. 2026
  • The researchers focused on a practice known as proximal intercessory prayer (PIP), defined as in-person, face-to-face prayer directed toward another individual’s well-being.
    — Khloe Quill, FOXNews.com, 31 May 2026

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