How to Use irrational in a Sentence

irrational

adjective
  • She had an irrational fear of cats.
  • He became irrational as the fever got worse.
  • And while crowds may be irrational, the study of crowds is a science.
    IEEE Spectrum, 27 Dec. 2023
  • And, of course, bad ideas and irrational exuberance are par for the course at CES.
    Robert Evans, Rolling Stone, 27 Jan. 2024
  • These next few years might be rough on the legion of irrational LeBron Haters.
    Dan Shaughnessy, BostonGlobe.com, 20 Jan. 2023
  • That’s so much deeper than an irrational fear of flight.
    Kristie Koerbel, Chicago Tribune, 13 Aug. 2022
  • Art gives us a place to be irrational, be wild, be an animal.
    Nathan Biehl, Hazlitt, 20 July 2022
  • And that started to bring in this level of despair and fear that is a little bit irrational.
    Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 13 Dec. 2023
  • But sometimes the thoughts our brains come up with are distorted and irrational.
    Pascal Bornet, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2023
  • What’s irrational is to pretend that such risks do not exist.
    James Freeman, WSJ, 9 Mar. 2022
  • Yet, there is one thing that Manilow has always pined for and now inspires some irrational fears: a Broadway show.
    Jesse McKinley, New York Times, 7 Nov. 2023
  • For a long time, the use of nuclear power has been hobbled by irrational fear, and by politicians’ fear of fear.
    Pieter Cleppe, National Review, 21 Nov. 2023
  • Sometimes, what appears to be an irrational fear may very well be a gut instinct.
    Annie Lane, oregonlive, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Panic will drive one to irrational thought and, if unchecked, bad behavior.
    Steve Meyer, Anchorage Daily News, 9 Jan. 2022
  • There was a rational way to build an economy, and there were irrational ones.
    Jason Blakely, Harper's Magazine, 10 July 2023
  • Part of football is an irrational fight against injury.
    Dave Hyde, Sun Sentinel, 10 Jan. 2024
  • But the anger behind these attacks isn’t irrational, and it isn’t expressed blindly.
    Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2022
  • Peyton: There’s this irrational confidence that both Steph and I have.
    WIRED, 27 July 2023
  • The irrational behavior of one man has given way to a rise in extremist rhetoric and has led to lives being put in danger.
    Stephanie Grisham and Gavin J. Smith, CNN, 17 Aug. 2022
  • Parents are trained to validate the feelings of their teenagers, as irrational as those feelings may seem.
    Matt Richtel, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Aug. 2022
  • That, however, would not mean that a juror’s finding in the Times’ favor would be irrational.
    Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 26 Feb. 2022
  • Meanwhile, the management side is too quick to dismiss the demands of writers as irrational.
    Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Picking different teams to win the same game in different pools is not irrational.
    Victor Mather, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2023
  • The fear of failure drives some new CISOs toward irrational behavior.
    Phillimon Zongo, Forbes, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Talk back to the worries that are irrational, reminding yourself of past transitions that worked out well.
    Rachel Feintzeig, WSJ, 22 Aug. 2022
  • Almost all of his previous films have been labeled as irrational, but none of his films have been as flat and unfunny as the latest one.
    Sweta Kaushal, Forbes, 27 Dec. 2022
  • But this week, a different Vladimir Putin emerged -- irrational, risky, paranoid.
    ABC News, 27 Feb. 2022
  • What is Groupthink? Groupthink occurs when people go along with a group’s irrational ideas.
    Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 23 May 2023
  • In a brief, Ahlers argued the board disregarded evidence of innocence and drew irrational conclusions.
    Darcy Costello, Baltimore Sun, 19 Jan. 2024
  • This irrational preference can lead investors to cling to losing investments in the hope of a rebound, often exacerbating poor performance.
    Dan Irvine, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024

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