How to Use a means to an end in a Sentence

a means to an end

noun phrase
  • Moreover, view financial accounting as a means to an end as opposed to an end in itself.
    Shivaram Rajgopal, Forbes, 5 Sep. 2024
  • Remember that wealth is not an end but a means to an end.
    Melissa Houston, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2024
  • Rather, our investors see ESG best practices as a means to an end.
    Cole Shephard, Fortune, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Apartments, we’re told, were once a means to an end, to getting a larger home.
    Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 11 Nov. 2023
  • The data should be a means to an end, though, not a source of validation in its own right.
    Samantha Kleinberg, STAT, 8 Jan. 2024
  • But, instead of just a means to an end kind of job, Thompson has chosen a path with a purpose.
    Rebecca Angel Baer, Southern Living, 5 Aug. 2024
  • Profits are critical, to be sure; but profits are a means to an end.
    Alan Murray, Fortune, 7 July 2023
  • In some of these stories, the genre elements are a means to an end rather than the principal focus.
    Dexter Palmer, Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2023
  • Her appearance in Mean Girls: The Musical was a means to an end tied to her biggest goals as an artist.
    Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Going on this date with Margeret though showed me a different way, that dating doesn’t have to chip away at us or be a means to an end.
    Phoebe McIlwraith, refinery29.com, 11 Apr. 2024
  • In the run-up to the Iraq War, diplomacy and weapons inspections became a means to an end: building a casus belli.
    Foreign Affairs, 18 Oct. 2012
  • Drafting was not a means to an end, artistic or architectural.
    Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
  • And even then, most were merely a means to an end—practical but undeniably ugly.
    Nina Molina, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2023
  • To put it another way, as innovation took hold, finance stopped looking like a means to an end—as the word finer had once implied.
    Gillian Tett, Foreign Affairs, 11 June 2019
  • Not in service of a selfish goal, but in mutuality and recognition of one another as more than a means to an end.
    Anne Kniggendorf, Kansas City Star, 14 Apr. 2024
  • Working as a journalist covering the police beat in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Michael Connelly believed his reporter’s job would be a means to an end in becoming a best-selling author one day.
    Demetrius Patterson, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Oct. 2023
  • Other signature elements, like the Gothic pointed arch, developed simply as a means to an end.
    Kate McGregor, House Beautiful, 14 July 2023
  • The researchers refer to this pernicious thought pattern as an ‘instrumental perspective.’ Such a perspective can slowly objectify your partner, turning them into a means to an end for you.
    Mark Travers, Forbes, 7 May 2023
  • But Iran’s nuclear program has always been a means to an end—security, status, independence, and international influence—not an end in and of itself.
    Eric Brewer, Foreign Affairs, 9 June 2023
  • Because millions of immigrants lacked status, policy discussions revolved around legalization; heightened security at the border was a means to an end.
    Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 17 Feb. 2024
  • Companies exploit people’s desire for connection by portraying their brands as a means to an end for defining personal identification and values—promises that inevitably fall short and only lead to more self-interested consumption and unhappiness.
    Rachel Nuwer, Time, 6 June 2023
  • By providing a safe space to be vulnerable and inhabit different perspectives, RTA offers a humane alternative to criminal justice, which primarily (and futilely) focuses on punishment as a means to an end.
    Vikram Murthi, IndieWire, 11 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'a means to an end.' 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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