How to Use interpolate in a Sentence

interpolate

verb
  • He smoothly interpolates fragments from other songs into his own.
  • He interpolated a very critical comment in the discussion.
  • One way to get out of the jam -- just interpolate right away!
    Anthony Cougar Miccio, Billboard, 28 Oct. 2021
  • And so a line can interpolate through two points but not three.
    Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 25 Aug. 2022
  • The new track interpolates part of Lamar’s anthemic 2015 song, which was co-produced by Pharrell and won two Grammy Awards.
    Mesfin Fekadu, USA TODAY, 25 Apr. 2020
  • Grande interpolates the melody in her verses with a saucy attitude.
    Erica Gonzales, Harper's BAZAAR, 18 Jan. 2019
  • Many of the realists whose novels are being interpolated by this show, though, were obsessed with the present.
    Phillip MacIak, The New Republic, 1 Nov. 2023
  • This may not be deathless prose, but Google’s AI, which works by interpolating new sentences to link sentences it is provided, seems to have captured something of the genre.
    Stephen L. Carter, The Denver Post, 3 May 2017
  • This reliance on sampling and interpolating older songs on Pink Friday 2 will not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the Hot 100 in recent years.
    Kristin Robinson, Billboard, 12 Dec. 2023
  • The reader struggles, along with Vanessa, to make sense of what is happening, to interpolate, to see the truth, with so many false accounts, so many delusions, so many efforts to neaten or prettify.
    Katie Roiphe, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2020
  • The Stein and Thomson estates, however, refused permission to interpolate these new texts into the work.
    Ryan Ebright, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2017
  • What hahahaspam did was interpolate between the frames, making the motion appear much more smooth.
    Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 28 Aug. 2012
  • Musgraves is surely the only artist, country or otherwise, who is making records eclectic enough to crib ancient Scottish folk melodies on one song and interpolate a hook from rapper JID on the next.
    Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone, 1 Mar. 2024
  • The cast is largely Japanese, with some American actors interpolated in scenes shot in this country.
    Thr Staff, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 June 2018
  • The Economist’s team (also stuck with the spurious 4636 datapoint) used a Machine Learning model to try to interpolate the missing data.
    George Calhoun, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Ultimately, Larson and Vogt proved that curves will always interpolate through the expected number of points, with the exception of four special cases.
    Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 25 Aug. 2022
  • Fiction offers the unique chance to interpolate old themes in new metaphors, reinvigorating crucial conversations bogged down by cliché.
    Judy Berman, Time, 11 Mar. 2022
  • Balfe gushes, referencing the flashbacks to 1960s Edinburgh and Boston that interpolate the show's second season and beyond.
    Taylore Glynn, Allure, 5 Mar. 2022
  • In a memorial interpolated near the end of the show, Sendak is heard in an interview saying, approvingly, that children are barbaric and, disapprovingly, that too many works meant for them ignore the fact.
    Jesse Green, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2017
  • Block model grades within the wireframe models were interpolated by inverse distance cubed (ID3).
    Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 28 Feb. 2024
  • Both movies interpolate familiar actors’ evocatively animated faces into stylized worlds; the effect is gorgeous but unsettling, less like watching a movie in a new medium than like watching it in a dream.
    Judy Berman, Time, 9 Sep. 2019
  • How: Every three minutes, locations of flight routes were transmitted to creator Aaron Koblin, who interpolated those values to create an animation of where every plane was flying.
    Hugh Hart, WIRED, 25 Jan. 2010
  • Laine Rettmer supplied straightforward, unsubtle, direction, and interpolated some silent characters, including a nervous new witch, subject to fits, both on the heath and later while serving dinner at the Macbeths’ place.
    Heidi Waleson, WSJ, 13 Dec. 2016
  • Its intensely first-person take on the experience of war is no less potent for interpolating elements of poetry and nostalgia.
    Dennis Harvey, Variety, 13 Nov. 2023
  • Such allegations are nothing new for West, who has been repeatedly sued for illegally sampling or interpolating in his tracks.
    Bill Donahue, Billboard, 27 Feb. 2024
  • But part of Sony's reputation is also due to its fantastic processing algorithms, which can interpolate frames with fewer artifacts than competing brands.
    Whitson Gordon, Wired, 6 Apr. 2021
  • But rather than learn traditional Western repertoire, Kadri set about interpolating the ragas (harmonic modes) and gamakams (ornaments and slurs) of classical South Indian music into saxophone playing.
    Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, 31 Oct. 2019
  • The new book, like its predecessor, has a format that’s familiar in contemporary nonfiction: exemplary tales interpolated with a little social and cognitive science.
    Sarah Larson, The New Yorker, 28 Mar. 2016
  • Howe also collaborated closely with songwriter-producer Blake Mills on string arrangements for some of the songs, and occasionally interpolated the tunes into his underscore.
    Jon Burlingame, Variety, 2 June 2023
  • But his reputation rested equally on his abilities as a composer and arranger for large ensembles, interpolating bebop’s crosshatched rhythms and extended improvisations into lush tapestries.
    Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, 19 Jan. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'interpolate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: