How to Use a means to an end in a Sentence

a means to an end

noun phrase

• Big moves, blindsides, backstabs — these are exciting when a means to an end, but strange when an end unto themselves.
  — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 6 Sep. 2024
• Like cogs slotting into a crude machine, these men are simply — and eagerly — fulfilling their purpose, which is enough of its own reward that the money almost starts to seem like a means to an end.
  — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 6 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
• Moreover, view financial accounting as a means to an end as opposed to an end in itself.
  — Shivaram Rajgopal, Forbes, 5 Sep. 2024
• 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

Last Updated: 14 Nov 2024