How to Use anticipatory in a Sentence

anticipatory

adjective
  • The seats are warm, the beer is cold and the mood is a wintry mix of jovial, secretive and anticipatory.
    Dave Orrick, Twin Cities, 26 Jan. 2017
  • What takes some of the air out of the anticipatory Correa balloon is the new schedule.
    Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times, 14 Dec. 2022
  • That could cause some anticipatory trades to bunch up on Thursday, the last trading day of the year's first quarter.
    Elaine Kurtenbach, Quartz, 28 Mar. 2024
  • All the glory of a Steve Jobs event—the precise starting time, the gorgeous slides, the anticipatory vibe—were present but for the master himself.
    Aaron Pressman, Fortune, 1 Sep. 2017
  • No trailer this year has filled me with as much anticipatory glee as this one.
    Sandra Gonzalez, CNN, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Its anticipatory tempo at the outset gives way to a more comforting pace as the lyrics propose pride and protection in the place of loss or anger.
    Lisa Abelar, USA TODAY, 14 May 2024
  • Social scientists have since learned more about anticipatory grief and now hold that it’s not only about the pending death of a loved one.
    Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 18 Jan. 2022
  • Bernstein leaps up, opens the curtains, flings his arms wide, and utters a roar of anticipatory delight, like Tarzan greeting a bright new day in the jungle.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 17 Nov. 2023
  • Every time thick, dark rain clouds move over the deserts that surround Las Vegas, there's an anticipatory buzz.
    Luke Runyon, azcentral, 9 Feb. 2020
  • More than 10 states have passed or are considering anticipatory bills to make sports betting legal if the Supreme Court opens the gates.
    Mark Alesia, Indianapolis Star, 26 Dec. 2017
  • And in those anticipatory overnight hours, all of the layers soften and bleed together to create a divine mousse-like cake.
    Alex Beggs, Bon Appetit, 18 June 2018
  • This stretches the fun: Making a date for a two-hour concert can produce two months of anticipatory pleasure.
    Laura Vanderkam, WSJ, 8 June 2018
  • Until then, the anticipatory grief felt by folks like Nina is a function of thinking ahead.
    Philip Chard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8 Dec. 2017
  • If there were a Geiger counter-like device to measure anticipatory excitement, the reading for me would have reached the red zone this past December.
    Klara Glowczewska, Town & Country, 14 Apr. 2016
  • The live music, anticipatory countdown, and massive balloon drop are one of the greatest New Year’s Eve parties at-sea.
    Janice Wald Henderson, Condé Nast Traveler, 13 Nov. 2019
  • Soon after, the main accused in the case, a nun, moved an anticipatory bail application in the Vadodara sessions court.
    Aarefa Johari, Quartz, 3 Feb. 2022
  • The summit, for all the anticipatory hype, was never expected to produce much in the way of new policies or strategy.
    Barbara Demick, latimes.com, 13 June 2018
  • Just make sure not to spend this anticipatory time ruminating on the many ways things can wrong, cautions Dr. DeMaria.
    Madeleine Burry, Good Housekeeping, 29 Aug. 2019
  • The game, unlike most shooters that make up the popular face of the genre, is deliberate and anticipatory.
    Washington Post, 28 Dec. 2020
  • Perhaps through taking back control in even the smallest way, our own fears and anxieties about the unknown can be lessened, and maybe even our anticipatory grief.
    Jessica Gold, Time, 30 Mar. 2020
  • At the moment, much of the enthusiasm for new French movies in the United States is running on the fumes of nostalgia for the industry’s days of greater achievements, and on anticipatory gleanings of new ones to come.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 9 Mar. 2017
  • Brees, with his trove of wisdom, has long been the rare anticipatory progression passer.
    Andy Benoit, SI.com, 13 Mar. 2018
  • And when Denmark ran up the white flag for real, passing between its center backs for a full 30 seconds in the 85th minute, the boos and whistles were louder than the anticipatory cheers for the anthems two hours earlier.
    Andrew Das, New York Times, 27 June 2018
  • The most anticipatory photo might be of Lynch receiving a hand-off from quarterback Derek Carr.
    Daniel Mano, The Mercury News, 1 May 2017
  • On Christmas morning, my sister-in-law watched me open her gift, her face frozen in anticipatory excitement.
    Your Fat Friend, SELF, 3 Apr. 2020
  • And then there's the Houston Fishing Show, a communal gathering of anglers and all things fishing related that for more than four decades has been a five-day anticipatory event that's more than the sum of its parts.
    Shannon Tompkins, Houston Chronicle, 28 Feb. 2018
  • The idea was anticipatory, looking at a scenario where hospitals became overwhelmed and were forced to discharge patients to go back to nursing homes.
    Fox News, 25 Nov. 2020
  • This law was, like many bad laws in American history, an act of anticipatory war fever—the government at the time was preparing for a potential war with France.
    Jacob Bacharach, The New Republic, 21 Aug. 2019
  • But Williamson, a spiritual guru and self-help author, has no patience for the anticipatory doom of November.
    Washington Post, 28 Sep. 2020
  • Living well in an unequal world means being haunted, at some level, by anticipatory loss.
    Paul Salopek, National Geographic, 10 Jan. 2020

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