How to Use brain-dead in a Sentence

brain-dead

adjective
  • The young boy of prophecy gets trampled into a brain-dead coma.
    — Darren Franich, Vulture, 14 Feb. 2025
  • Two days later, doctors told her Elijah was brain-dead.
    — Audra D. S. Burch, New York Times, 15 Sep. 2023
  • Three days later, he was declared brain-dead and taken off life support.
    — Aya Elamroussi, CNN, 23 Sep. 2023
  • The recluse of 30 years comes out of hibernation and emerges with a new album that fires up more brain-dead devotion and fawning.
    — Randy Myers, The Mercury News, 13 Mar. 2025
  • There are circumstances in which a patient who isn’t brain-dead may still become an organ donor.
    — Jen Christensen, CNN, 28 Oct. 2024
  • In 2022 a newborn named Owen Monroe became the first infant to receive such a transplant from a brain-dead newborn donor.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 19 Mar. 2024
  • He was declared brain-dead a day after the altercation.
    — Andrea Vacchiano, Fox News, 29 June 2023
  • Angela suffered a seizure and was declared brain-dead on March 15 and later removed from life support.
    — Rebecca Rosenberg, Fox News, 23 Mar. 2023
  • The Penn team plans to refine the procedure on an additional three brain-dead people.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Blood in a brain-dead patient circulated through a pig’s liver that was outside the person’s body.
    — Jen Christensen, CNN Money, 26 Mar. 2025
  • The first transplants were short-term experiments in patients who were brain-dead, so there was no further risk to human health.
    — Amber Dance, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Mar. 2025
  • Nichols, who was placed on a ventilator upon arrival at the hospital, was also brain-dead at the time of his death, the report shows.
    — C Mandler, CBS News, 4 May 2023
  • On a gurney, a brain-dead patient lay connected to a whirring Rube Goldberg-esque machine: a tangle of tubes and siphons on wheels.
    — Megan Molteni, STAT, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Nadella doesn’t say outright what everyone in the room knows: Just a decade ago, pundits had declared the company brain-dead.
    — Steven Levy, WIRED, 21 Nov. 2024
  • In the eighth episode, the boy’s parents agree to donate their brain-dead son’s organs, and the doctors and nurses line up for an honor walk as the parents and their son are led off to meet up with the transplant team.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 21 Feb. 2025
  • Craig was charged with first-degree murder March 19 for spiking 43-year-old Angela Craig's protein shakes with cyanide and arsenic, which left the mother of six brain-dead.
    — Rebecca Rosenberg, Fox News, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Watch on He later died after suffering from a stroke that left him brain-dead and being taken off life support.
    — Adrianna Freedman, Good Housekeeping, 20 July 2023
  • Maddie was taken to the hospital, but three days later was declared brain-dead, Grobmeier said.
    — Alexandra Kukulka, Chicago Tribune, 26 June 2023
  • Rushed by medics to Jacobi Medical Center, he was pronounced brain-dead and placed on life support.
    — Emma Seiwell, New York Daily News, 15 June 2024
  • But before then, the researchers want to conduct more tests in people who are brain-dead, including those whose own liver is not functioning, and see whether the pig livers can function for up to one week.
    — Sara Reardon, Scientific American, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Another 15 to 19 are based in hospitals, but devoted to only brain-dead organ donors.
    — Isabella Cueto, STAT, 25 June 2024
  • These are usually victims of accidents or brain injuries who have been declared brain-dead but whose other organs will keep working as long as the body is kept on life support.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 17 Oct. 2023
  • The girl was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced brain-dead and eventually taken off life support, FOX 19 reported.
    — Brie Stimson, Fox News, 26 May 2024
  • For the first time, organ donors who were declared brain-dead were moved out of the hospital and into an independent, freestanding center to have their organs removed.
    — Isabella Cueto, STAT, 25 June 2024
  • These studies lasted days or weeks because of ethical concerns over how long experiments can be run on brain-dead people.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Anthony was brain-dead and had no pulse when paramedics arrived at his family’s Lancaster home, prosecutors said.
    — Noah Goldbergstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Especially in the earlier games, saving was heavily restricted, and progress could be easily lost—one brain-dead stumble can set you back an hour.
    — Gabriel Winslow-Yost, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
  • Wiggs was initially arrested for first-degree domestic assault, The Star reported, as his wife was alive but brain-dead after the attack.
    — Ilana Arougheti, Kansas City Star, 7 June 2024
  • Daniel was brain-dead and transported to a hospital, where his family ultimately decided to take him off life support.
    — Audrey Conklin, Fox News, 15 Nov. 2023
  • Also, unnatural herds of crabs roam the land, and a brain-dead patient who’s about to have his organs harvested suddenly revives on the operating table.
    — Lev Grossman, The Atlantic, 30 Sep. 2024

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