How to Use preemptive in a Sentence

preemptive

adjective
Definition of preemptivenext
  • The country took preemptive action against the perceived enemy.
  • Those two strikes were part of five preemptive strikes the U.S. took over the course of five days last week.
    — Eleanor Watson, CBS News, 22 Jan. 2024
  • There was rage in there, for sure, a touch of preemptive regret.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 30 Sep. 2023
  • Mitchell didn’t have to wait until 2023 to write a preemptive last-word on the subject.
    — Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork, 4 Oct. 2023
  • And preemptive kudos for the next time — because there will be a next time.
    — Nathan Baird, cleveland, 7 Nov. 2022
  • There was no other way than to be preemptive in a story that had to be watched.
    — Karen Mizoguchi, PEOPLE.com, 19 Jan. 2018
  • In today’s deal, North’s leap to four hearts was preemptive.
    — Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 21 July 2019
  • In today’s deal, East bid three spades (preemptive) with this hand.
    — Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Newsom has been among the critics of the preemptive shutoffs.
    — Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 2 Nov. 2019
  • Britain’s preemptive response destroyed most of Denmark’s merchant fleet, one of the largest in the world.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2023
  • Thanks to a long drive and some preemptive thinking, the Coanes and their daughter managed to survive both storms.
    — Eileen Reslen, Redbook, 15 Sep. 2017
  • For the next runner, Gorman nudged me and bellowed a loud and preemptive hello.
    — Doreen St. Félix, Vogue, 7 Apr. 2021
  • The closer Iran gets to a bomb, the more the risks of war in the region will rise—and mainly via a potential preemptive attack by Israel.
    — Michael A. Cohen, The New Republic, 25 Jan. 2022
  • The speculation that the fight may be postponed has led some businesses tied to the event to take preemptive steps.
    — Lance Pugmire, latimes.com, 29 Mar. 2018
  • The three of them will share the stage on the second night of debates, and Biden’s team has already put out preemptive attacks on Harris and Booker.
    — Lissandra Villa/detroit, Time, 31 July 2019
  • But the Texas law was designed to avoid preemptive legal review.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2021
  • Let’s not do a preemptive strike in invalidating the will of the voters.
    — David Garrick, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 June 2019
  • Perhaps most troubling is that all this has led to a wave of preemptive self-censoring.
    — Karen Chu, National Review, 18 Feb. 2022
  • The title song is a preemptive strike, a breakup before things get too serious.
    — Star Tribune, 12 Nov. 2020
  • Doing so would very likely spur a preemptive strike by Israel or even a joint strike by Israel and the United States.
    — Zhou Bo, Foreign Affairs, 13 May 2024
  • And if the goal of the day is to bring lovers together, not to test to see if somebody loves you, there’s nothing wrong with having a preemptive dialogue.
    — Elizabeth Ayoola, Essence, 9 Feb. 2022
  • This is the downside to the preemptive strike: Every projection is a confession of guilt.
    — Windsor Mann, TheWeek, 13 Mar. 2020
  • Knocked off their feet by your preemptive move, the competition should be struggling to keep up in your customers’ minds.
    — Jim Heininger, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
  • Finally, on June 5, Israeli planes launched a preemptive strike, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground.
    — Yossi Klein Halevi, The Atlantic, 7 June 2017
  • And there is no guarantee that a preemptive strike could knock out KIm's weapons completely.
    — Charlie Campbell / Beijing, Time, 6 July 2017
  • That’s exactly why Democrats and the broad left should launch a preemptive strike against his lionization.
    — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 10 Apr. 2023
  • Trump held what amounted to a preemptive attack at a news conference in New York on Thursday.
    — Fritz Farrow, ABC News, 27 Sep. 2024
  • Now, Ball said, businesses don’t need to make any preemptive moves with their deposits at other banks.
    — Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times, 13 Mar. 2023
  • The promises of retribution were at the fore, too, including for former health czar Anthony Fauci, who received a preemptive pardon from Biden in his final hours.
    — Philip Elliott, TIME, 20 Jan. 2025
  • The former president’s sweeping and even preemptive pardons subvert ongoing legal processes and, therefore, the law.
    — Noah Rothman, National Review, 21 Jan. 2025

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