How to Use tectonic in a Sentence

tectonic

adjective
  • There has been a recent tectonic shift in voting patterns.
  • This is a tectonic shift, not just a news story.
    — Andreas Schweitzer, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • Fox said the earthquake was caused by tectonic stress and strain.
    — Mary Kilpatrick, cleveland.com, 10 June 2019
  • These are called tectonic plates.
    — Brandi D. Addison, USA Today, 15 June 2026
  • Carbon doesn't just emerge where tectonic plates meet.
    — Ben Mather, Space.com, 7 Feb. 2026
  • The moon meeting Uranus shifts you around like a tectonic plate.
    — USA TODAY, 19 Oct. 2024
  • When tectonic plates shift along a fault line beneath the ocean floor, the seabed can rise or drop abruptly.
    — Brandi D. Addison, Austin American Statesman, 30 July 2025
  • Many tectonic plates can shift in Florida in the next year or so.
    — Andrew Stanton, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 May 2025
  • Taiwan is prone to earthquakes and is near the junction of two tectonic plates.
    — Jeanine Santucci, USA Today, 27 Dec. 2025
  • Underneath her grief were the rumblings of a tectonic shift in her life.
    — Megan Spurrell, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Aug. 2019
  • Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes.
    — NBC News, 24 Oct. 2021
  • Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 21 Jan. 2025
  • This is the big show, the tectonic tipping of the universal scales, the peak of the week.
    — Doug MacCash, NOLA.com, 3 Apr. 2018
  • Whether it was caused by rain or tectonic plates, the crack is still a pressing issue for locals.
    — Megan Friedman, Popular Mechanics, 5 Apr. 2018
  • Continents sit on tectonic plates—slabs of crust that float on the mantle.
    — Jenny Wu, Science | AAAS, 21 Jan. 2021
  • Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes.
    — CNN Money, 27 Dec. 2025
  • There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes them up into the air, of course.
    — Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 13 June 2020
  • And that tectonic movement didn’t push them straight up, but tilted them just a few degrees.
    — ArsTechnica, 2 May 2026
  • Most quakes occur due to movement along faults at tectonic plate boundaries.
    — Hollie Silverman, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Oct. 2025
  • The bigger story is that this is a part of a tectonic shift in politics.
    — Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 Mar. 2018
  • The waxy shell should come apart in large chunks, peeling away in tectonic plates to reveal the feather-free goose skin.
    — Natalie Krebs, Outdoor Life, 23 Dec. 2020
  • That’s where two of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust meet up and slide alongside each other.
    — Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 18 Apr. 2023
  • But at some places deep in the oceans, the parting of tectonic plates causes the mantle to be exposed.
    — Margherita Bassi, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Aug. 2024
  • In my own life there was nothing metaphorical about the moving of those tectonic plates.
    — Literary Hub, 4 Nov. 2025
  • The region sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau where tectonic plates meet.
    — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 7 Sep. 2022
  • The social and legal progress over the last 20 years may signal a tectonic shift.
    — Brook Larmer, New York Times, 2 May 2018
  • Stress accumulates as tectonic forces move the crust, but parts of the fault are locked and unable to slip freely.
    — Kasha Patel, CNN Money, 19 June 2026
  • The places where tectonic plates pull away from each other are significant too.
    — Ben Mather, Space.com, 7 Feb. 2026
  • Italy lies near the fault line that exists between Eurasian and African tectonic plates.
    — National Geographic, 24 Aug. 2016
  • This had the makings of a tectonic moment in sports history.
    — Contessa Brewer,alex Sherman, CNBC, 11 Sep. 2025

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