How to Use occur to in a Sentence

occur to

phrasal verb
  • That's one of the first things that would occur to you.
    — Washington Post Live, Washington Post, 25 July 2024
  • These are thoughts that could occur to you live in the moment of the show itself.
    — Wesley Morris, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2023
  • Did the thought ever occur to you to take the test for the regular show?
    — Devon Ivie, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2024
  • The idea of running a cruise line occurred to Skjeldam back in 2012.
    — Time, 13 June 2023
  • Oh, that had that aspect hasn’t occurred to me, but yeah.
    — James Hibberd, HollywoodReporter, 3 July 2025
  • Join the points where the right angles occur to form a triangle, as seen on the right.
    — Quanta Magazine, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Your wife may have ideas that would never have occurred to you on your own.
    — Blair Braverman, Outside Online, 22 July 2024
  • When this occurs to cells in the SCN, the brain has a hard time syncing to the time of day through the presence or absence of light.
    — Cathy Habas, SELF, 17 Jan. 2025
  • The idea that this wasn’t worth doing never would have occurred to him.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 2 Nov. 2023
  • Yet the moral impact doesn’t seem to occur to our noble hero at all.
    — Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 19 Dec. 2024
  • Late in that process, a thought occurred to the idol: Why not help his fans understand through his art?
    — Stephen Daw, Billboard, 2 Aug. 2023
  • One idea that occurred to them was to start a paper filled with shipping news.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2025
  • This thought would never occur to a real fan of pro wrestling.
    — James Parker, The Atlantic, 6 July 2025
  • These are the thoughts that occurred to me at the end of my recent teaching semester.
    — Robert Klose, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Harbaugh quipped that such a measure did not occur to him.
    — Edward Lee, Baltimore Sun, 28 July 2023
  • Maybe there were things about them that had never occurred to you before.
    — Jonathan Cohen, SPIN, 22 Oct. 2024
  • What has just occurred to ending the war in Ukraine, like where is Prigozhin's interest?
    — CBS News, 25 June 2023
  • As the name of the series suggests, all the action and drama featured in the show occurred to real-life bugs.
    — Kelli Bender, Peoplemag, 15 Feb. 2024
  • One out of four people in this country has some kind of hack or breach occurring to them.
    — Scott Kramer, Forbes, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Maybe that thought will occur to her tomorrow or the day after.
    — Variety, NBC News, 5 June 2023
  • This occurred to me, floating on my back, off a cove in Mallorca.
    — Sophie Yun Mancini, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Mar. 2024
  • Linda's goal was to tweak the changes that had occurred to her facial features due to aging.
    — Michelle Lee, People.com, 7 May 2025
  • How could such a thing occur to one of the most buzzy startups in Silicon Valley?
    — Kylie Robison, Fortune, 12 Dec. 2023
  • On one visit years ago, a store owner posed an idea to Karen that had never occurred to her.
    — Kansas City Star, 23 July 2025
  • An act of God needs to occur to get an independent movie made.
    — Mikey O'Connell, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Nov. 2024
  • The patient holds the device to their head before a headache occurs to prevent or decrease the prospects of getting a headache.
    — By Allison Horton, Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024
  • The invasion of Ukraine led to big fears about a spike in food prices, which did occur to some extent but wasn’t as bad as some had feared.
    — Jessica Mathews, Fortune, 15 Oct. 2024
  • Some third thing of significance that hasn’t yet occurred to me?
    — Sophie Brookover, Vulture, 2 May 2025
  • That stuff doesn’t really occur to me until the end of filming.
    — Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 25 June 2025
  • Suen plans to attend as a representative of Elk Grove to see if any changes occur to the bill.
    — Jack Rodriquez-Vars july 15, Sacbee.com, 16 July 2025

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