How to Use capillary in a Sentence

capillary

1 of 2 adjective
  • The capillary mat, which helps draw up water to the seedlings from the base tray, can be hand washed and used again, too.
    Renee Freemon Mulvihill, Better Homes & Gardens, 1 Mar. 2023
  • The thinking is that the protein may lead to capillary leaks, which can cause fluid to enter the lungs.
    Shari Rudavsky, The Indianapolis Star, 26 Aug. 2020
  • This sets up a capillary force that draws liquid (water, in this case) back up into the film.
    Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 10 Nov. 2020
  • This works through capillary action, or wicking, which puts the soil in contact with the water.
    Jennifer Carmichael, Better Homes & Gardens, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The hummingbird tongue is a fluid trap, not a capillary tube.
    Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 4 May 2011
  • Capillary electrophoresis has been used since the 1980s, but the new test made some important changes that optimize the process to search for alien life.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 27 Jan. 2017
  • The finger stick or a heel stick, known as a capillary test, is the immediate go-to option for doctors.
    Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com, 27 July 2017
  • From there, the tide flows east in the grooves between cobblestones, carried first by capillary action, then forced from behind by the surge.
    Justin Beal, Curbed, 11 Sep. 2021
  • The strips are curled into cylinders and welded at the seam, then stretched and cut into fine capillary tubes, which machines glue to plastic hubs.
    New York Times, 5 Mar. 2021
  • The person’s sample is mixed with a small amount of liquid, which is applied to one end of the strip and then flows, via good old capillary action, toward the other end.
    Tien Nguyen, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Aug. 2020
  • Water, the primary enemy, must be kept off the ends of the logs to prevent rot through capillary action.
    Karen Pilarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 17 Apr. 2018
  • The insert uses capillary action to draw water up to the roots of the plant, encouraging them to grow down into the bottle.
    Rachel Klein, Popular Mechanics, 17 Jan. 2023
  • Most lead tests in children are taken by pricking the finger or heel to draw samples of capillary blood for testing.
    Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times, 17 May 2017
  • The key difference now is that rather than rely on a capillary method to return to the CPU where it can be boiled again, simple gravity takes the liquid back.
    Gordon Mah Ung, PCWorld, 27 Jan. 2020
  • Like so: insert an open-ended glass capillary tube into your mouth.
    Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 20 Mar. 2013
  • Given the open capillary channels, the device surface can be easily cleaned and reused.
    Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 July 2020
  • Micro-structures between their scary scales act like little straws, using the force of capillary action to pull in water from moist sand.
    National Geographic, 7 Apr. 2018
  • The majesty of the mystical body of Christ has been radically diminished, replaced by a sort of capillary effect of shame.
    Lance Morrow, WSJ, 24 Oct. 2018
  • White’s tree frogs (Litoria caerulea) secrete mucus from their toe pads to hold on to steep surfaces through capillary forces, similar to the way a wet piece of tissue sticks to a window.
    Becky Summers, Scientific American, 16 Jan. 2013
  • Some passages of the film play like HD nature screensavers: brooding mountains and clouds, or the capillary structures of dandelions.
    Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 25 Oct. 2019
  • Jotheri says the salt can invade foundations by capillary action alone.
    WIRED, 29 Sep. 2022
  • By capillary action, water can also collect into lenses and chunks in the soil.
    Madeline Ostrander, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 May 2020
  • Rather than surrounding the electrodes, water is drawn up to the electrodes using capillary action.
    Ed Ballard, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2022
  • In a 2012 study David Cundall of Lehigh University and colleagues found that some species drink via capillary action, the same mechanism by which water climbs from roots to leaves in plants.
    National Geographic, 7 Apr. 2018
  • The sand sticks together because water builds tiny bridges between the grains through capillary action, but the pressure exerted by the surrounding medium, in this case the air, matters too, the team notes.
    Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 3 Aug. 2012
  • As in the surface network, blocking blood flow in the capillary system had little effect on the larger network — blood simply rerouted itself.
    Quanta Magazine, 14 Aug. 2013
  • In these rare-yet-potentially-deadly cases, the capillary bed is destroyed causing hemoglobin to float freely in the blood.
    Anna Nordseth, Discover Magazine, 27 July 2023
  • Weintraub thinks that lower capillary counts could help indicate the early signs of dementia.
    Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz, 11 July 2019
  • The skin of newborns and infants also shows elevated redness compared with that of adults and takes a pink coloration in areas that are especially rich in capillary loops (e.g.,cheeks).
    Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 2 July 2017
  • But his ability to synthe-size across disparate fields also has proved a strength, enabling him to trace how energy courses through every capillary of the world's economy.
    Paul Voosen, Science | AAAS, 21 Mar. 2018
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capillary

2 of 2 noun
  • Her pen strokes are blue and smooth and thin like the capillaries of maps.
    Teen Vogue, 29 Aug. 2017
  • By focusing the laser on a single blood cell flowing through the capillary, the researchers could trap it and stop the flow of blood.
    Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 23 Apr. 2013
  • Mosquitoes use their proboscis, or part of their mouth, to cut the skin and get to the capillaries or veins to fill up with blood.
    USA TODAY, 7 June 2023
  • This means by the time blood flows out of the capillaries and into the veins there is very little pressure behind it.
    Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 11 May 2023
  • The capillaries on your skin get very adept at closing off so the cold doesn't get allowed into your core.
    Elias Leight, Billboard, 4 May 2018
  • Blood pressure is the force of blood flow in arteries, veins and capillaries.
    Minali Nigam, CNN, 18 July 2019
  • The air sacs are wrapped in tiny capillaries, which carry blood cells that are waiting for oxygen.
    Caroline Chen, ProPublica, 15 Apr. 2020
  • Those capillaries allow in more of the light when full of blood, and less between beats, and the device measures how much light is absorbed.
    Carolyn Wells, Longreads, 3 Mar. 2020
  • The device takes blood from capillaries rather than veins, takes two to three minutes and is said to be almost painless.
    Lucette Lagnado, WSJ, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Van Leeuwenhoek took a live eel and a couple of microscopes and spent two hours with the czar gazing at blood rushing through the capillaries of the eel’s tail.
    Robert Krulwich, National Geographic, 2 Aug. 2016
  • This will help the broken capillaries heal more quickly, as well.
    Lily Puckett, Teen Vogue, 14 Feb. 2020
  • In terms of the insides, the hydraulics, what happened was that the arteries and capillaries began to decay.
    National Geographic, 15 Jan. 2017
  • But the red ink film floats up, thanks to a phenomenon called capillary-induced peeling, in which the water penetrates between the less-sticky ink and the rock.
    Tess Joosse, Science | AAAS, 24 Mar. 2021
  • Flames already licked a second home on the cul-de-sac, which was choked with thick gray smoke, punctured only by the high beams of cars that sped out of the capillaries of small streets that crisscross the hillsides here.
    Matthew Ormseth, Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct. 2019
  • Normally, oxygen crosses the alveoli into the capillaries, tiny blood vessels that lie beside the air sacs; the oxygen is then carried to the rest of the body.
    Meredith Wadman, Science | AAAS, 17 Apr. 2020
  • There’s also some pink dye to add life-like color, and the embalmer might gently massage the hands and feet to help coerce the fluid into capillaries in the fingers and toes.
    Victor Llorente, Popular Mechanics, 24 Apr. 2020
  • These crystals — monosodium urate crystals — had lodged in the tiny capillaries of my toe joint, inflaming it.
    Paul Theroux, Town & Country, 17 June 2013
  • Then other cells cause your capillaries to leak blood plasma; its function is to envelop and slow down the invaders.
    Houston Chronicle, 13 May 2018
  • This occurs by blood capillaries growing through old bone, which is dissolved and replaced by new bone.
    Roger S. Seymour, Discover Magazine, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Meanwhile, candiru catfish sneak under the gills of larger fish and slurp all the blood in their feathery breathing capillaries.
    Sofia Quaglia, Discover Magazine, 31 May 2023
  • Davis compared the water system to blood vessels — huge arteries close to the heart, and tiny capillaries in the extremities.
    Bob Shaw, Twin Cities, 23 Feb. 2017
  • Embedded in the walls of the hundreds of miles of capillaries that wind through the brain, the barrier keeps most molecules in the blood from ever reaching sensitive neurons.
    Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 20 June 2023
  • Most arteries and veins connect through a bed of very thin capillaries that bring nutrients and oxygen to cells. AVAs, though, are different.
    Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 21 June 2023
  • After a few weeks of use, my skin looks less dull without any broken capillaries or irritation (as is common with retinoids).
    Megan Decker, refinery29.com, 11 Apr. 2023
  • After being inhaled, hantaviruses lodge in the lungs and invade tiny blood vessels, called capillaries, causing them to break.
    Don Sweeney, sacbee, 21 July 2017
  • Because capillaries are so tiny, the pressure behind blood flowing through them is reduced greatly.
    Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 11 May 2023
  • The tiny crystals become trapped in the nar- rowness of joints and capillaries and tendons, leading to the inflammation that develops into gouty arthritis.
    Paul Theroux, Town & Country, 17 June 2013
  • That shape allows the cells maximal flexibility in order to move through the narrowest capillaries in the body.
    Lisa Sanders, M.d., New York Times, 16 May 2023
  • The density of the smallest vessels — capillaries — became comparable to that of young mice.
    Sharon Begley, STAT, 22 Mar. 2018
  • An intense, visible, broad-spectrum light that heats and destroys brown spots, melasma, broken capillaries, and sun spots.
    Megan Gustashaw, Glamour, 31 Aug. 2019

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