How to Use semaphore in a Sentence

semaphore

noun
  • At one point, six of them line up front to back and do a kind of semaphore.
    — Jeffrey Gantz, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Mar. 2018
  • The truck hit the rear of the car, rolled onto its side, left the road and hit a semaphore light.
    — Nick Ferraro, Twin Cities, 3 Oct. 2019
  • Frustrated, Dad would wave his arms semaphore style in these dreams.
    — Literary Hub, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Predictably, this area was a resource locked with a mutex semaphore.
    — Jacek Krywko, Ars Technica, 2 Oct. 2020
  • The Jeep struck a semaphore pole, severing the vehicle in two.
    — Nick Ferraro, Twin Cities, 16 Apr. 2026
  • One dancer executed a series of semaphore-like movements, which the dancer on the next roof over tried to copy exactly, and so on down the line.
    — Brian Seibert, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2020
  • Some of our fleeing units had hauled even more frozen Russian bodies out of the woods and propped them upright, their arms stilled in various eerie semaphore.
    — Arna Bontemps Hemenway, The Atlantic, 19 July 2019
  • The dollar, which has fallen by 6% against a basket of currencies since March, is usually part of the semaphore.
    — The Economist, 11 June 2020
  • Aquatic extinctions happen silently, beneath the surface, lacking any clear semaphore.
    — Nick Pyenson, Smithsonian, 26 Oct. 2017
  • By contrast, Trisha Brown’s dancers were taught by her to walk down walls, twirl down poles, semaphore to one another across rooftops, and, quite often, fling their limbs around like bags of wet laundry.
    — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2017
  • The badge covers topics such as semaphore, American Sign Language, Morse code and the use of nautical flags.
    — Christopher Mele, The Seattle Times, 23 June 2017
  • Some towns used a clockwork device with no lights at all, while others used the semaphore system, with Stop and Go placards rotating in and out of a housing like mechanical arms.
    — Bob Sorokanich, Car and Driver, 20 Sep. 2017
  • The semaphore had been transmitting the audio broadcast of Neil Armstrong’s historic moon landing in 1969.
    — Sal Pizarro, The Mercury News, 13 Mar. 2017
  • Customers should be advised to bring semaphores in order to gain the attention of the waitstaff, which seems unaccustomed to any action at all and slightly bemused to encounter actual humans in their midst.
    — Fox, Town & Country, 21 Nov. 2012
  • When inflated, they can also be used as fishing bobbers or signaling devices for semaphore, according to SensiblePrepper.
    — Alex Williams, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2017
  • Hesitation when that spatula is pointed at you could foul up precision operation that hinges on quick ordering and what appears to be a semaphore system of toothpicks that denote exactly what the diner has ordered.
    — Andy Staples, SI.com, 30 June 2017
  • Giotto’s figures make simple, resonant gestures that are at once hauntingly isolated — like private semaphores — and vital markers in an unfolding communal narrative.
    — Washington Post, 26 Feb. 2020

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