How to Use a means to an end in a Sentence
a means to an end
noun phrase-
Rather, our investors see ESG best practices as a means to an end.
—Cole Shephard, Fortune, 22 Aug. 2023
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Apartments, we’re told, were once a means to an end, to getting a larger home.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 11 Nov. 2023
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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
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Profits are critical, to be sure; but profits are a means to an end.
—Alan Murray, Fortune, 7 July 2023
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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
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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
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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
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Drafting was not a means to an end, artistic or architectural.
—Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
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And even then, most were merely a means to an end—practical but undeniably ugly.
—Nina Molina, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2023
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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
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Other signature elements, like the Gothic pointed arch, developed simply as a means to an end.
—Kate McGregor, House Beautiful, 14 July 2023
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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
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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
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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