How to Use gremlin in a Sentence

gremlin

noun
  • And yet, who’s to say a gremlin or a crash isn’t waiting for him in Monterey.
    — Nathan Brown, USA TODAY, 18 Sep. 2021
  • The gremlins, the ghosts, the whispers, the doubts, all of them, gone in that one 2-minute and 17-second snapshot of excellence.
    — Bob Kravitz, Indianapolis Star, 29 Sep. 2017
  • The gremlins come out; the edifices crumble; the saucy doubts and fears triumph.
    — James Parker, The Atlantic, 10 Dec. 2024
  • Dinner severely lacks salt, and the salt gremlin at the back of my brain is not happy.
    — R29 Team, refinery29.com, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Is there a gremlin running around bleeding air from out tires?
    — Laura Johnston, cleveland, 22 Nov. 2022
  • Segovia said later that the statement did not come from his office, but rather from the city — as if gremlins produced it.
    — Elaine Ayala, ExpressNews.com, 22 Feb. 2020
  • Was this based on some brand-new evidence that the virus mutates like a gremlin, getting worse at night?
    — Roxanne Khamsi, Wired, 16 Nov. 2020
  • Whether that proves to be the case will come down to whether those electrical gremlins are passing flukes or recurring faults.
    — Eric Tingwall, Car and Driver, 28 Jan. 2020
  • This three-time repeat has put to rest any lingering suspicions of gremlins in the data.
    — J. B. MacKinnon, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2017
  • Digital broadcasts are in their infancy, and this one came with a few gremlins.
    — Kirk Kenney, sandiegouniontribune.com, 3 Sep. 2017
  • More worrying than Japanese fighter planes is an evil presence—a gremlin—that threatens to tear the plane apart in mid-air.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 9 Dec. 2020
  • But with technology comes glitches, and on the first night of its stint at Brooklyn Steel in May, Slowdive was stymied by digital gremlins.
    — Finn Cohen, New York Times, 14 Aug. 2017
  • That’s why the financial problems in the school district keep multiplying like gremlins.
    — Otis R. Taylor Jr., San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Jan. 2018
  • With the race looming the following Friday, the team spent the few remaining hours turning their electrical gremlins into lawn gnomes.
    — Emme Hall, The Verge, 24 Feb. 2023
  • The film does land a few, including a primo gag that involves gremlins running a nightmarish airline.
    — Barbara Vandenburgh, azcentral, 12 July 2018
  • Yet in their original form gremlins are alive and well, living under new names—daemons, worms, virtual pets.
    — The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 23 Oct. 2024
  • Using the Windows install that comes out of the box is probably fine on most of these, but blowing away the existing install and starting fresh is the surest way to exorcise any gremlins.
    — Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 1 Apr. 2024
  • Need to power through dinner and bedtime with children who have seemingly turned into gremlins?
    — Anna Thomas Bates, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3 Jan. 2018
  • Having taken pole at Mid-Ohio, O’Ward bowed out just past the halfway point with yet another mechanical gremlin.
    — Nathan Brown, The Indianapolis Star, 6 Oct. 2022
  • Some gremlins can be unraveled with linear problem-solving, a prowess possessed by AI.
    — Chip Bell, Forbes, 15 Jan. 2025
  • The herculean effort of moving my body even one tiny inch was rewarded by an invisible gremlin twisting a steak knife even deeper into my back.
    — Marisa Cohen, Parents, 12 Aug. 2023
  • But an electrical gremlin kept the seatback angle locked at a too-relaxed recline, leaving the steering wheel at an uncomfortable distance.
    — K.c. Colwell, Car and Driver, 7 Feb. 2023
  • Over-the-top elements of this architectural style include balconies carved with peering gargoyles and gremlins on gilded buildings.
    — Kristin Braswell, Travel + Leisure, 3 Feb. 2024
  • An exhaust fire ultimately put an end to that car's race on Sunday morning, with the sister machine retired shortly afterward due to electrical gremlins.
    — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 29 Jan. 2018
  • That’s the anti-charm of these trucks, the myriad potential electrical gremlins on obsolete out-of-production components.
    — Popular Mechanics, 18 Apr. 2018
  • Braking Braking is a common gremlin for hybrid vehicles, which use a mix of regenerative and friction braking.
    — Annie White, Car and Driver, 10 July 2017
  • Overall, mechanical problems — whether faulty transmissions, or squeaks, rattles and wind noise — have largely vanished, according to Power, with electronic gremlins the top source of consumer complaints.
    — NBC News, 20 June 2018
  • The researchers tried to account for the usual gremlins that influence sleep: alcohol consumption, coffee intake, naps, smoking, shift work and similar factors, and used statistical methods to control for their effect.
    — Ben Guarino, chicagotribune.com, 23 May 2018
  • Consistency is the gremlin of massive operations like this, and occasionally the engineering of dishes falls short.
    — Los Angeles Times, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Unfortunately, the complex update also introduced gremlins in some systems, leading to higher-than-usual CPU usage.
    — Brad Chacos, PCWorld, 30 Apr. 2019

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