How to Use dispensable in a Sentence

dispensable

adjective
  • Do you consider any of the staff to be dispensable?
  • Computers have made typewriters dispensable.
  • No company sets out to be a place that treats people as dispensable.
    — Ann Kowal Smith, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2023
  • Time and time again we are reminded whose lives are valued and whose are deemed dispensable in this country.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Sep. 2020
  • Added to this, central banks seem to be favourably inclined towards big bank bailouts, while small banks are seen as dispensable.
    — Richard Werner, Fortune, 20 Mar. 2023
  • No one blinks at this, as businesses see contract workers as dispensable.
    — Jack Kelly, Forbes, 26 Aug. 2022
  • An online boyfriend is a viable and dispensable source of attention.
    — Kira Homsher, Longreads, 14 Mar. 2023
  • These children are cannon fodder, dispensable pawns in someone else’s war.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 13 Nov. 2025
  • How the red twos can be either dispensable or invaluable, depending on what city the game is being played in.
    — New York Times, 24 Feb. 2021
  • Usually, top management takes the view that middle managers are the most dispensable when times get shaky.
    — Phil Blair, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 June 2023
  • This isn’t the pros, where the owners hold all the power and most of the coaches are considered easily dispensable.
    — Stewart Mandel, New York Times, 8 Oct. 2025
  • For too long, these vendors have been marginalized, treated as dispensable, come-and-go providers of goods and services who can be hired in good times and fired in bad times.
    — Christian Schuh, Fortune, 27 June 2022
  • These insecticide baits come in small plastic containers, called bait stations, or as a dispensable gel.
    — Megan Hughes, Better Homes & Gardens, 31 July 2020
  • Growing up in a family that didn’t have much dispensable income, when our pets got sick, a trip to the vet wasn’t an automatic response.
    — Washington Post, 7 Aug. 2021
  • The T cells wipe out all of the patient’s B cells — normal as well as cancerous — but B cells are dispensable.
    — Marie McCullough, Philly.com, 5 Apr. 2018
  • There is nothing like a deadly pandemic to remind us that these qualities are not dispensable in a president.
    — Steve Chapman, chicagotribune.com, 5 Aug. 2020
  • Takeoff is booster assisted, and landing is achieved with parachutes combined with dispensable airbags.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 23 Nov. 2025
  • Ornaments are no more dispensable than foundations.
    — Justin Davidson, Curbed, 23 Apr. 2026
  • The modern running back is seen as the most dispensable of commodities by NFL coaches and scouts.
    — Tim Cowlishaw, Dallas News, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The 23-year-old has the kind of athleticism Green has not possessed in a decade, but that does not mean Green’s skillset is dispensable.
    — Joseph Dycus, Mercury News, 29 June 2026
  • And when things have gone south for the Cavs in recent years, Love's name pops up in trade rumors and the narrative of him being dispensable cranks up again.
    — The Si Staff, SI.com, 20 July 2017
  • The truth of conservatism lies elsewhere, in the unshakeable principles that the dispensable litany of professed ideals protects.
    — Allan J. Lichtman, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Sep. 2025
  • The instrument for getting rid of the dispensable farmers has been uncontrolled production.
    — Grace Schneider, The Courier-Journal, 23 May 2018
  • In some cases, antibodies might be almost entirely dispensable, as long as there are other immune defenders to fill the void.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2021
  • In fact, it’s been suggested that the regime regarded him as dispensable, giving him the unenviable job of holding down the fort while others escaped.
    — Leander Kahney, WIRED, 14 Apr. 2003
  • This investment in employee support is a necessity that helps counter the feeling of being dispensable held by many frontline workers.
    — Jordan Ekers, Forbes, 31 Aug. 2021
  • If reporting evidence of war crimes brought no consequences for the criminals, then truth had lost its value and journalists had become dispensable.
    — The New York Review of Books, 10 June 2019
  • That could mean that the Croatian is considered dispensable, and United may be a favourable destination.
    — SI.com, 4 Mar. 2018
  • Our loved ones are dying in unsafe nursing homes, our nurses are overwhelmed and unprotected, and our essential workers are treated as dispensable.
    — Mike Ives, New York Times, 2 Nov. 2023
  • This two-tier labor system allows companies to boast generous benefits on the one hand and to treat contractors as dispensable labor on the other.
    — Anna Furman, Wired, 23 June 2020

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