How to Use unpaired in a Sentence

unpaired

adjective
  • Tops are iron, with four unpaired 3d electrons, and cobalt, with three.
    IEEE Spectrum, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Tops are iron, with four unpaired 3d electrons, and cobalt, with three.
    Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum, 29 Apr. 2026
  • These devices will soon be unpaired and removed from all user accounts.
    Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Hens and drakes pair up and spread out, looking to feed, roost, and loaf in places where they won’t be disturbed by unpaired males.
    Joe Genzel, Outdoor Life, 28 Aug. 2020
  • The spins of unpaired electrons will resonate with some of these frequencies.
    IEEE Spectrum, 30 Apr. 2026
  • Each iron atom carries four or five unpaired electrons whose behavior depends on that of the others.
    Quanta Magazine, 29 May 2026
  • The ideal atoms are ones that have unpaired electrons swarming around the nucleus in what are known as 3d orbitals.
    Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Shortly after the eggs hatched, an unpaired male decided to claim this as his territory.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 May 2021
  • For this, the ideal atoms are ones that have unpaired electrons swarming around the nucleus in what are known as 3d orbitals.
    IEEE Spectrum, 15 Nov. 2023
  • In 2020, the nest was raided by an unpaired male, and only three of seven chicks survived.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Mar. 2026
  • But, as the nest-building and egg-laying season approaches, unpaired males start causing trouble.
    Richard O. Prum, The New Yorker, 17 May 2017
  • The unpaired male wolf was a member of the Copper Creek pack, but left the pack in the fall of 2025.
    Christa Swanson, CBS News, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Unpaired males will attempt to force copulation during the egg-laying season.
    Michael Forsberg, National Geographic, 18 June 2017
  • And the more unpaired spins a molecule has, the more complicated the interactions among them.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 24 Jan. 2025
  • The wolf’s breeding season starts in February, and family groups merge then as the unpaired young wolves select mates.
    Frank Glaser, Outdoor Life, 1 Apr. 2026
  • The final cells were large eggs with 23 unpaired chromosomes, ready to fuse with a sperm cell containing a complementary set.
    Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian, 10 Feb. 2018
  • Each man then rejects all but his more preferred suitor, resulting in a tentative match for some contestants, while others remain unpaired.
    Max Springer, Scientific American, 10 Oct. 2024
  • The other records the strength of the magnetic field by detecting changes in the spin of unpaired electrons present in a vapor of alkali-metal atoms oriented by a laser beam.
    IEEE Spectrum, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Light hitting the proteins produces a pair of free radicals, highly reactive molecules with unpaired electrons.
    Laura Sanders, WIRED, 28 Oct. 2009
  • Ginger's antioxidants can help neutralize harmful free radicals, which are molecules with at least one set of unpaired electrons.
    Johna Burdeos, Health, 2 July 2024
  • However, when unpaired with satisfaction, these beliefs can lead to serious doubts about the relationship in its entirety.
    Mark Travers, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025
  • The amino acids also scavenge free radicals—molecules with unpaired electrons that can damage proteins and DNA.
    Jea Morris, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Jan. 2022
  • One year there was a hiccup in the nesting cycle when an unpaired male wren attempted to raid the nest resulting in just three of seven chicks surviving, but a little research told us this was not unusual.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Aug. 2023
  • Hillis’s slim handbook aimed to convince her reader that, with a stiff upper lip and a healthy dose of economic self-indulgence, being an unpaired woman could be not just tolerable but liberating.
    Ashley Fetters, Curbed, 20 June 2018
  • Under normal circumstances, having an additional, unpaired electron exacts a cost on the system's total energy.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 15 Mar. 2022
  • This leads to a phenomenon known as magnetization precession, which occurs when atoms with unpaired electron spins are placed in a magnetic field and rotate around the magnetic field at a precise frequency.
    IEEE Spectrum, 26 July 2017
  • In ordinary magnetic materials, unpaired electrons behave like tiny compasses and eventually align with one another.
    Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 18 Jan. 2026
  • Additionally, the agency cited 39 incidents of safe owners reporting the product had been accessed by unpaired fingerprints.
    Kate Gibson, CBS News, 19 Oct. 2023
  • In a full-sized EPR machine, the sample under examination is placed between two poles of a powerful electromagnet, aligning the spins of the unpaired electrons.
    IEEE Spectrum, 30 Apr. 2026
  • As researchers discovered decades ago, magnetic strength can be greatly improved by adding to the crystalline lattice atoms with unpaired electrons in the 4f orbital—notably the rare earth elements neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium.
    Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum, 29 Apr. 2026

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