How to Use tentativeness in a Sentence

tentativeness

noun
  • That's all good, but there's a sense of tentativeness in this announcement.
    — Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 7 Feb. 2025
  • And there is some tentativeness.
    — Kevin Acee, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Sep. 2025
  • There is no right moment, and the early scenes are about fumbling steps and the tentativeness of awkward new roles.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 10 Oct. 2025
  • What also stood out last season, though, was his surprising tentativeness on some plays.
    — Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer, 30 May 2024
  • Emilia’s tentativeness around her father is a red flag, and so is the fact that the two haven’t seen each other for 13 years.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 16 May 2026
  • There’s a delicacy and tentativeness to their feelings, one that makes its payoff all the more tender and hard-won.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 1 June 2020
  • Last year, as weeks of quality time morphed into months, the baby’s tentativeness melted away.
    — Dallas News, 7 May 2021
  • The awkwardness of that, the tentativeness.
    — Jessica Radloff, Glamour, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Others are using Johnson’s tentativeness to wade into the current crises to take the bullhorn to present themselves as the voice of the city.
    — Dallas News, 7 June 2020
  • His performance that night was hardly a home run, but Biden’s tentativeness was understandable.
    — Philip Elliott, TIME, 24 June 2024
  • Ecker said, however, that Heim has exhibited a bit of what would best be described as tentativeness on pitches in on his hands.
    — Evan Grant, Dallas News, 27 Aug. 2023
  • Even though Bickerstaff disagrees, there was a noticeable tentativeness to Nance’s game.
    — Chris Fedor, cleveland, 9 Jan. 2021
  • Although a portion of his possessions were still tinged with tentativeness, Williams returned a bullying bounce to several drives to the basket.
    — Julia Poe, chicagotribune.com, 30 Mar. 2022
  • There were moments of trepidation and tentativeness along the way, with Izzo imploring Akins to crash the boards and attack the basket harder during both of his returns.
    — Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 21 Dec. 2022
  • There’s a tentativeness in Criss’ performance that exists parallel to and apart from the character of Bobby’s own nervous energy.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 14 Apr. 2022
  • There’s a tentativeness to the way Benne, who’s still a playwriting student at what was formerly known as the Yale School of Drama, lifts off from this ground of realism.
    — Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 25 Mar. 2022
  • In each configuration, the foursome found a way of drawing strength from the freedom in Nuttall’s playing, rather than succumbing to a deferential tentativeness.
    — Jeremy Eichler, BostonGlobe.com, 6 Jan. 2023
  • The concerns around Rudolph, Pronman noted, were some tentativeness defensively and a lack of physicality.
    — Corey Pronman, New York Times, 11 June 2026
  • Relentless self-doubt with a cognitive emphasis, rather than emotional fixation, preserves the tentativeness of beliefs and also avoids the dangers of premature closure.
    — Mark Travers, Forbes.com, 17 Jan. 2026
  • The tentativeness with which Das approaches her subject yields her no deeper a conclusion than the truism that interactions between different cultures are complex, dynamic and subtle.
    — Balaji Ravichandran, Washington Post, 5 Apr. 2023
  • What was more surprising was that the witness transcripts from the House Science Committee showed the highest number of words conveying tentativeness and the lowest number of words conveying certainty.
    — Maya Kornberg, Scientific American, 17 Sep. 2021
  • That fall, writing in the Times, a leading dance critic commented, Charlotte Garbinski, usually so voluptuously wild in Luciano Fiore’s boundary-pushing choreography, evinced a rare tentativeness.
    — Literary Hub, 7 May 2026

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