How to Use derrick in a Sentence

derrick

noun
  • The heat from the fire caused the derrick to collapse, which spread the flames across the site.
    — CBS News, 22 Jan. 2018
  • The lines from the derrick were attached to the center of the spire to keep it straight.
    — Jonathan Schifman, Popular Mechanics, 27 Mar. 2019
  • Among them is Nova, who, as a child, watched her father get crushed by an oil derrick.
    — Ella Riley-Adams, New York Times, 21 Aug. 2023
  • The crown block has a pulley system and is located at the top of the derrick.
    — Dallas News, 21 Oct. 2022
  • Baldwin Hills and its crown of oil derricks hovered in the hazy distance.
    — Scott Garner, latimes.com, 15 Dec. 2017
  • An oil derrick stands above the plains north of Amarillo, Texas.
    — Stephanie Yang, WSJ, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Rumors surfaced that the derrick was there to lift a 60-foot flagpole.
    — Jonathan Schifman, Popular Mechanics, 27 Mar. 2019
  • More than a century ago, the area was home to oil derricks owned by the Hancock family.
    — Vanessa Lawrence, ELLE Decor, 6 Feb. 2018
  • Minarets pierced the mild moon, so different from the oil derricks the House of Nobel had erected.
    — Joshua Kucera, Slate Magazine, 6 Feb. 2017
  • Now several thousand people live and work here, and the oil fields are chockablock with derricks, many as close as 10 feet apart.
    — Photographs and Text By Adam Dean, New York Times, 22 May 2017
  • People talk about oil derricks, in North Dakota, for example.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 15 Mar. 2024
  • Indian burial grounds, oil derricks and the city’s sordid, riotous history all come up.
    — Benjamin Oreskes, www.latimes.com, 7 June 2018
  • What remains is a ghost town with a 19th-century residence, schoolhouse, derrick, and barn.
    — Los Angeles Magazine, 22 Feb. 2018
  • At no great distance from the base of the derrick, there were million-dollar views northeast toward Acadia and south toward the open ocean.
    — Nick Paumgarten, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Hanging from them are strings of plastic beads with plastic shrimp and a medallion displaying another oil derrick, spouting oil.
    — Nick Chrastil, Slate Magazine, 16 Oct. 2017
  • More than 600 bucket, utility and trailer trucks, and derricks to dig holes in the islands’ rocky terrain were shipped in by barge.
    — Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, 10 Jan. 2018
  • Huntington Beach High School’s football team is still called the Oilers, and its icon is an oil derrick.
    — Laura Blasey, Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2021
  • Rounding a bend in the waterway, the boat arrives at a giant drilling rig with a 150-foot-tall derrick and roaring engines.
    — Christopher Helman, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
  • The company built a 54-foot statue of an oil derrick, now the largest monument in the Austin, Texas, area.
    — Jenna Sundel, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Big Oil’s legacy lives on; the high school's team name is the Oilers, its logo a derrick, mascot is Oil Man.
    — Christopher Helman, Forbes, 14 Feb. 2024
  • The helmet featured a Columbia Blue oil derrick outlined in scarlet.
    — Nate Davis, USA TODAY, 4 May 2023
  • Such inattention, perhaps, is rooted in the state’s enduring reputation for wide open spaces, as a land of cattle ranches and oil derricks.
    — Andrew R. Graybill, WSJ, 5 July 2023
  • Los Angeles Magazine detailed some of the more creative efforts to hide not just wells, but towering derricks.
    — Aldo Svaldi, The Denver Post, 8 Dec. 2019
  • The state Capitol itself sits atop a giant oilfield, and an oil derrick stands outside the building as a symbol of the industry’s importance.
    — Washington Post, 23 May 2017
  • Zora Chung, the company’s cofounder and CFO, points to an oil derrick lodged in the startup’s parking lot.
    — Aarian Marshall, Wired, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Between downtown and Venice Beach, thousands of homeowners uprooted their orange trees and put oil derricks right in their backyards.
    — Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2026
  • The population had managed to hang on even as much of its habitat was razed to make room for pineapple plantations, a missile silo, oil derricks and luxury condos.
    — Carrie Arnold, Scientific American, 29 Mar. 2020
  • Between a skate park and a police substation, the sculpture is an icon in a city of few monuments, where verticality usually takes the form of oil derricks or fan palms.
    — Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, 9 July 2019
  • Smudge-ugly oil derricks befouled the graves, and by around 1905, graves and gravestones had been moved to a new Home of Peace, well east of downtown.
    — Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2024
  • In the 1920s, much of the Los Angeles Basin was covered with a forest of wooden oil derricks.
    — George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2023

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