How to Use stratagem in a Sentence

stratagem

noun
  • This disagreement doomed any stratagem that the large states could have launched.
    — Jack Rakove, WSJ, 16 Sep. 2022
  • The authors believed this stratagem to be worse than electoral fool’s gold.
    — Kyle Sammin, Washington Examiner, 12 Nov. 2020
  • Nor is the climactic battle scene that will hinge on a one-chance-in-a-million stratagem.
    — Author: Michael O'Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News, 18 Dec. 2019
  • When his stratagems work, or simply seem to work, he’s heralded as a genius.
    — Ezra Klein, Vox, 7 Nov. 2018
  • And by Monday, after a year of legal stratagems on his part, both charges had been dropped.
    — Max Londberg, kansascity, 24 Oct. 2017
  • Such laws are a cynical stratagem aimed at depriving unions of resources.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2021
  • There are some other fun stats in there, including a ranking of the game's most popular stratagems.
    — Ian Stokes, Space.com, 3 Mar. 2026
  • If geopolitics can be likened to a game of chess, there are a finite number of gambits and stratagems available on every board.
    — Vance Serchuk, National Review, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Lunch with an older friend prompts a writer to try some seemingly outdated stratagems for attracting a mate.
    — Rebecca Anne Nguyen, New York Times, 5 Aug. 2023
  • Swain has developed a stratagem for diverting attention from his own tender age.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 7 July 2023
  • The zombie blood stratagem was not employed, keeping the series logical for at least another week.
    — Steve Johnson, chicagotribune.com, 19 Mar. 2018
  • From start to finish, the Red Sox deployed a careless, thoughtless, and passive stratagem.
    — Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald, 12 Jan. 2026
  • This is a common stratagem, said Dove, the psychology researcher.
    — Cezary Podkul, ProPublica, 13 Sep. 2022
  • The second stratagem is to close the microscopic pores — stomates — found mostly on the undersides of the leaves.
    — Adrian Higgins, Washington Post, 20 July 2019
  • Although evocative of a Robert Ludlum thriller, the stratagem is not all that complicated.
    — Carl M. Cannon, Orange County Register, 23 Apr. 2017
  • Armed with the insight, Jill tries and fails to rouse him from his slumbers (a sly and symbolic stratagem, involving the family dog).
    — Richard Brod, The New Yorker, 10 Sep. 2021
  • Cuba’s favourite economic stratagem—extracting subsidies from left-wing allies—has had its day.
    — The Economist, 30 Sep. 2017
  • One of their most effective stratagems was the bankrolling of right-wing primary candidates for House and Senate seats.
    — Bill Hewitt, Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2019
  • Kelly is quietly devastating in a scene where Emma is the victim of a cruel stratagem.
    — Don Aucoin, BostonGlobe.com, 11 May 2023
  • In this scheme, the batteries provide the burst of power needed to take off, a stratagem that lets technicians tune the fuel-burning engine to run at its ideal rate.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 1 June 2018
  • Second, the savings stem from shelter-in-place orders, a novel government stratagem to control a pandemic.
    — Alex Davies, Wired, 27 Apr. 2020
  • The football stratagem is seen as a one-time-only maneuver made due to extraordinary circumstances.
    — Brian Steinberg, Variety, 18 Sep. 2023
  • Some had resorted to adding eligible-looking strangers on Facebook, a stratagem unheard-of before the war.
    — Hwaida Saad, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Jan. 2020
  • The first stratagem of the racist is not to quote Adolph Hitler, or George Wallace, or bad science, or heretical religion.
    — John Archibald | [email protected], al, 16 Jan. 2022
  • Night after night the stratagem was repeated successfully.
    — Robert Easton, Outdoor Life, 3 Sep. 2025
  • In order to be separated from animal continuity, the first stratagem was the mask, camouflage.
    — New York Times, 28 Apr. 2020
  • These slimy stratagems attracted the attention of the Department of Justice.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 16 July 2019
  • Instead of maximizing pill profits, his job is to save millions of dollars by educating doctors about expensive prescriptions and the stratagems used to sell them.
    — NBC News, 9 June 2017
  • As such, the Eagles propose that a team could be granted two opportunities per game to retain possession after a score without having to use the onside kick stratagem.
    — Nate Davis, USA TODAY, 20 Apr. 2021
  • As long as this stratagem goes uncorrected, our nation’s investment in its Air Force will continue to be misunderstood.
    — Dave Deptula, Forbes, 6 July 2021

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