How to Use rhyme or reason in a Sentence

rhyme or reason

noun
  • From one day to the next, with no rhyme or reason.
    — Larry Olmsted, Forbes.com, 27 Aug. 2025
  • There is no rhyme or reason as to when and where shrimp will run.
    — Steve Waters, Miami Herald, 7 Feb. 2025
  • There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, the good or the bad.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 13 Feb. 2026
  • There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to which ones were cut.
    — Sarah D. Wire, USA Today, 5 Apr. 2025
  • There is no rhyme or reason to any of my actions.
    — Broti Gupta, New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2026
  • There was no rhyme or reason for it except to do an art thing.
    — al, 20 Apr. 2020
  • There just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason about who made it and who didn’t.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Aug. 2021
  • Herrera said there’s no rhyme or reason to when the area gets busy.
    — Kelli Smith, Dallas News, 27 Sep. 2021
  • There’s simply not much rhyme or reason to their actions at times.
    — Jeremy Woo, SI.com, 23 May 2018
  • With no apparent rhyme or reason, some things have been spared.
    — Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN, 17 Jan. 2025
  • Is there no point in trying to find a rhyme or reason for his behavior?
    — Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • There wasn’t really a rhyme or reason.
    — Julius Miller, Los Angeles Times, 26 Jan. 2026
  • But even those who had no real rhyme or reason to party found an excuse to strike a pose.
    — Maria Ward, Vogue, 28 Oct. 2017
  • There seems to be little rhyme or reason to what gets deranked and what doesn’t.
    — Constance Grady, Vox, 31 Mar. 2018
  • There’s no rhyme or reason to his choices, just whatever moves him on the day.
    — Michael Sykes, USA TODAY, 21 Nov. 2022
  • There is no rhyme or reason as to why — real estate doesn’t always make sense.
    — Alyssa Shelasky, Curbed, 12 Oct. 2022
  • My guess is that the car wanted to connect with my phone, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.
    — Scott Kramer, Forbes, 21 Jan. 2025
  • There were too few ball fakes or rhyme or reason to the Irish offense for long stretches.
    — Tom Noie, The Indianapolis Star, 30 Nov. 2020
  • With this being your second adaptation in a row, is there any rhyme or reason to that?
    — Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Jan. 2023
  • Because of that, there isn’t any rhyme or reason about what to prioritize and when.
    — Evan Nicole Brown, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Dec. 2022
  • There’s no rhyme or reason to the other results in the conference.
    — Rex Nelson, Arkansas Online, 11 Oct. 2022
  • These sociopaths have no rhyme or reason, and that’s part of the fascination of these films.
    — Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 23 Sep. 2025
  • And there's no rhyme or reason to think this will help the cause in Philadelphia.
    — Ryan Morik, FOXNews.com, 22 Apr. 2026
  • There’s not always a rhyme or reason when a player struggles, Boone added.
    — Gary Phillips, New York Daily News, 17 Apr. 2024
  • The cadence of shows in the world of Ralph Lauren doesn’t have much rhyme or reason.
    — Zachary Weiss, Vanity Fair, 18 Jan. 2026
  • The dropout issues have vexed Ryzen customers for months, with no seeming rhyme or reason for the cause.
    — Gordon Mah Ung, PCWorld, 12 Mar. 2021
  • There’s no real rhyme or reason as to why the second pick in particular has been a land mine.
    — New York Times, 17 June 2019
  • There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the accidents, no pattern to uncover.
    — Paul L. Underwood, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2020
  • Dwarfs, like bees, appear aimless in their flights—up and down, left and right, with no obvious rhyme or reason.
    — Shannon Stirone, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Every now and then some of them do particularly well; there’s no rhyme or reason to me.
    — Tony Maglio, HollywoodReporter, 21 Oct. 2025

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