How to Use contraption in a Sentence

contraption

noun
  • The people wondered how the contraption worked.
  • The minute one falls, the whole contraption starts to go.
    Eric Johnson, Recode, 23 Aug. 2018
  • The mice pop out, and the whole contraption dangles in the trees.
    Seth Borenstein, The Seattle Times, 28 Apr. 2017
  • The contraption comes with one air-tight lid that goes on the top pan in the stack.
    Kelly Allen, House Beautiful, 28 Jan. 2020
  • The slot for the tape popped up from the body of the contraption like the escape pod of a flying saucer.
    Melissa Francis, Country Living, 18 Apr. 2017
  • The mise en place of my cup, spoon, and pour-over contraption.
    Chris Schalkx, Condé Nast Traveler, 3 Aug. 2021
  • And this past July, a man pushed a peanut to the top of Pike’s Peak with a bizarre contraption taped to his nose.
    Frederick Dreier, Outside Online, 22 Aug. 2022
  • Did the new contraption give him some kind of new power?
    Michael Casagrande | McAsagrande@al.com, al, 1 Feb. 2022
  • Godfrey got the idea to alter a toy football and add that to the contraption.
    Matt Wake | Mwake@al.com, al.com, 18 June 2019
  • That sounds like a blow to the concept of the EmDrive, but Woodward is not ready to close the case on the contraption just yet.
    National Geographic, 22 May 2018
  • Instead of the sticks or drinking straws used with apes, the ravens got small rocks as tools to open the boxy contraption.
    William Wan, Washington Post, 13 July 2017
  • The contraption is on the second model in the yellow dress in the video below.
    Sarah Spellings, The Cut, 4 July 2018
  • The contraptions were light and cheap, costing about $350 each.
    David E. Sanger, New York Times, 23 Apr. 2024
  • If only one elephant pulls an end, the rope slides out of the contraption.
    Katherine Harmon Courage, Scientific American, 23 May 2017
  • But can someone build a contraption that could carry me up to the top?
    CBS News, 25 Feb. 2018
  • Once in orbit, the contraption will be far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth.
    Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 22 Sep. 2024
  • This handy contraption is a classy way to tote around your favorite six-pack.
    Mark Stock, Men's Health, 19 Sep. 2022
  • As the contraption sank, a rare deep-sea creature mistook it for a meal.
    Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, 16 May 2024
  • The 7-pound contraption folds down to the size of a briefcase, and includes a carry handle to boot.
    Outdoor Life, 23 Apr. 2020
  • The rough-hewn contraption first took flight in 2011, and the team that built it founded Volocopter to advance the design.
    J. George Gorant, Robb Report, 30 Nov. 2021
  • There’s no telling when and if Vivo will launch such a contraption.
    Chris Smith, BGR, 1 July 2021
  • One of the team members sketched plans for their pulley-like contraption in black ink.
    Arkansas Online, 15 July 2021
  • But the contraption failed to catch on, perhaps because smells could travel back up the pipe.
    Amanda Foreman, WSJ, 9 June 2022
  • The entire contraption weighs less than two pounds and packs into a small mesh bag about the size of a sneaker.
    Wes Siler, Outside Online, 29 Mar. 2021
  • Of the three probes that contained the wooden contraption, Ranger 4 was the only one to make it to the lunar surface.
    Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 30 Dec. 2020
  • There are all sorts of variations on this contraption, but the basic recipe is the same.
    The Editors, Field & Stream, 8 Oct. 2020
  • The Haloid Xerox contraption was the size of two washing machines and weighed 648 pounds.
    David Goldman, CNN, 6 Nov. 2019
  • The head was made of black polystyrene, the wing folds were made of black elastic stocking, and the whole contraption was covered in felt.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Van Dien's entire body and face were covered in a caped contraption to look like the upper torso riding a horse without a head.
    Stacy Lambe, People.com, 19 Nov. 2024
  • His vision of Treehouse Town is brimming with imaginative contraptions, like crow’s nests for viewing, air trams, rope swings, trapdoors and sycamore slides.
    Megan Gambino, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Dec. 2024

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