How to Use sclerotic in a Sentence

sclerotic

adjective
  • This can be done nimbly, and need not slow a sometimes-sclerotic process.
    — Terri Gerstein, New York Daily News, 13 Jan. 2026
  • That opened the way for gradual change in the sclerotic government.
    — Tracy Wilkinson, latimes.com, 22 June 2018
  • Of course the regulators will spring to the defense of their sclerotic wards but the tide is unlikely to be stemmed.
    — Clem Chambers, Forbes, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Virtually no one feels the urgency or has the clout to reform a sclerotic system.
    — Justin Davidson, Daily Intelligencer, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Forcing households to prop up the sclerotic state banking system, on top of the weak labor market, isn’t helping.
    — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, 15 Feb. 2019
  • To be sure, France’s sclerotic welfare and regulatory state has stymied growth.
    — Eliora Katz, WSJ, 2 July 2017
  • Necrotic has a bad smell and destroys the surrounding tissue, and sclerotic exhibits scar tissue.
    — Bartie Scott, Teen Vogue, 23 Aug. 2018
  • The people who dream of a better world are up against a sclerotic and undemocratic system helmed by people who tell us things can’t be better.
    — Colette Shade, The New Republic, 11 Dec. 2020
  • The result is both greater inequality, and a more sclerotic economy.
    — Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, 11 Dec. 2017
  • At his start, some of his biotech colleagues praised him as a visionary, an outsider shaking up an industry that had grown sclerotic at its highest ranks.
    — Damian Garde, STAT, 24 Aug. 2023
  • The streets became less sclerotic, cars moved more fluidly, the air grew cleaner, and money flowed toward public transit.
    — Curbed, 31 May 2023
  • This is true, now more than ever, but even a sclerotic Congress is susceptible to public passions.
    — Jon Allsop, New Yorker, 24 Apr. 2026
  • The estrangement of mother and son is inherited along with all the other trappings of the sclerotic upper class.
    — Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times, 25 Nov. 2020
  • His supporters see him as a powerful rebuke to years of sclerotic, hapless governance.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2023
  • Buckley wrote his exposé of Yale’s slouch toward fat, sclerotic, nihilism du jour in 1951.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 11 Apr. 2021
  • Museums in Italy, owned and controlled by the state, have been infested with politics and sclerotic because of it.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 12 Sep. 2020
  • The nerves develop scars or sclerotic lesions (sclerosis is Greek for hard) in the aftermath of such attacks.
    — Bret Stetka, Scientific American, 18 June 2015
  • Central state institutions in Bosnia did not collapse but became sclerotic.
    — Adis Maksić, The Conversation, 19 Nov. 2025
  • Mr Abbas’s corrupt, sclerotic government has spent much of the past decade feuding not with Israel but with its own people.
    — The Economist, 26 Oct. 2017
  • And time is running out for that sclerotic body to pass any major laws before next year, when Democrats will almost surely lose their governing trifecta.
    — Wired, 22 July 2022
  • Change comes slowly to the Senate, a sclerotic institution that still has a pair of spittoons on the floor because, well, tradition.
    — Los Angeles Times, 18 Apr. 2022
  • Murphy was decried as the pick of a sclerotic, reform-resistant establishment.
    — Michelle Cottle, Mercury News, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Even with those techniques, hiring has simply gotten harder—so much so that the entire labor market might become a touch more sclerotic, and business dynamism might dim a bit.
    — Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, 2 June 2026
  • President Obama was awkwardly brought back to the White House to bolster support for his sclerotic health plan.
    — orlandosentinel.com, 8 Apr. 2022
  • Bud Selig’s sclerotic approach to leadership ensured that any problem facing the game would go unresolved for at least a year or two, festering in the process.
    — Si.com Staff, SI.com, 25 Mar. 2018
  • In fact the evidence suggests that, as America’s economy has become more sclerotic, big firms have been able to count on cranking out high profits for longer.
    — The Economist, 6 Feb. 2020
  • Instead, Burton got a lesson in how a sclerotic Illinois bureaucracy can be deadly.
    — Amy Dickinson, chicagotribune.com, 4 Oct. 2017
  • That was once unheard-of in an event where movement upward was traditionally sclerotic and the results sometimes seemed predetermined.
    — New York Times, 19 Feb. 2018
  • And several of those countries, saddled with crumbling health systems, sclerotic bureaucracies or civil unrest are ill-equipped to contain the threat.
    — Los Angeles Times, 25 Feb. 2020
  • The Pentagon has tried to revamp its famously slow and sclerotic acquisitions pipeline.
    — Garrett M. Graff, New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2026

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