How to Use sortie in a Sentence

sortie

noun
  • Too often on his sorties, though, his stomach would start to knot.
    — The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Once rare and exotic, sorties like this have become routine in just two years’ time.
    — Christopher Mims, WSJ, 30 Mar. 2019
  • Even with all that extra armor, every turtle tank sortie across no-man’s-land is risky.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 10 Mar. 2025
  • During one of those sorties, a drone exploded near her husband.
    — Ekaterina Bodyagina Nanna Heitmann, New York Times, 12 Feb. 2025
  • Eleven of the sorties crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.
    — Andrea Vacchiano, Fox News, 27 Jan. 2024
  • Russian forces are dug in and protected by mines, artillery and endless drone sorties.
    — Alex Horton, Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2023
  • Cash and Olive hopped on, too, after Cash made a second sortie for hot chocolate.
    — Christopher Keyes, Outside Online, 22 June 2020
  • This design allows the drone to engage multiple threats in one sortie.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 31 Mar. 2026
  • Landry flew thirty sorties in a B-17 bomber and survived a crash landing.
    — Rich Cohen, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
  • The compound has two entrances and two exits to carry out raiding sorties or fetch water.
    — Joe Grimm, Detroit Free Press, 15 July 2017
  • In Desert Storm, only a fraction of those sorties had precision weapons.
    — Richard Hall, Time, 3 Mar. 2026
  • Artemis seeks to go to the Moon with a sense of permanence rather than flying a half-dozen sorties down to the lunar surface.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 3 Apr. 2023
  • The cutting edge of the civil rights movement was game-planning military sorties as much as marches.
    — New York Times, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Prickly concedes that getting video of a hit often requires a second sortie, sometimes three or four.
    — Tamar Jacoby, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
  • In the following days, Japanese sorties rained ordnance on the port.
    — Peter Eisner, Smithsonian, 29 Sep. 2017
  • In the following days, Japanese sorties rained ordnance on the port.
    — Peter Eisner, Smithsonian, 22 Aug. 2017
  • Counting only sorties in which at least one weapon was released, about three-fourths of the action took place during the Obama years.
    — Abc News, ABC News, 18 July 2024
  • Currently, the wings fly 30-60 sorties per day from Hill’s flightline.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 7 Jan. 2020
  • The first aerial sorties went up at midnight on Bastille Day, July 14.
    — Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 15 Oct. 2024
  • To recreate the sortie over the Ruhr, the Lancasters had to fly far lower even than on the actual raid.
    — Adam Bernstein, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Apr. 2018
  • To re-create the sortie over the Ruhr, the Lancasters had to fly far lower even than on the actual raid.
    — Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, 30 Apr. 2018
  • Cochrane flew two sorties, one with Ben and Michael, another with Ray and Ben’s father.
    — Ted Katauskas, Outside, 23 Sep. 2025
  • In the first phase of her opposed sortie, the Nautilus evaded three submarines hoping to cut her trail with their sonar listening gear.
    — sandiegouniontribune.com, 13 May 2018
  • The Chinese Navy and Air Force have been sending planes and vessels on sorties around the island.
    — Dexter Filkins, New Yorker, 14 July 2025
  • Following the fire, the crew kept up combat sorties until the withdrawal decision.
    — Munis Raza, Interesting Engineering, 19 Mar. 2026
  • To give you some idea of the problem, imagine an F-35 running a sortie from Hawaii to Taiwan, say.
    — Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 14 June 2026
  • In June, China’s airforce sent 28 planes close to Taiwan in what was then the biggest sortie this year.
    — Jacob Gu, Bloomberg.com, 2 Oct. 2021
  • The fighting included fighter jet sorties, exchanges of rocket fire and artillery barrages.
    — CNN Money, 31 Dec. 2025
  • On Smith’s last tour, the Vinson’s aviators flew 8,499 sorties.
    — Carl Prine, sandiegouniontribune.com, 21 Oct. 2017
  • Russia got better at tracking and shooting down the TB2s, and Ukraine started pulling them from risky sorties.
    — Peter Weber, The Week, 6 Feb. 2023

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