How to Use off-the-shelf in a Sentence

off-the-shelf

adjective

• Instead of burning lots of cash to reinvent the wheel, use an off-the-shelf product.
  — Expert Panel®, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
• That high barrier keeps many parks going back to off-the-shelf thrill rides.
  — Robert Niles, Orange County Register, 5 Apr. 2024
• More and more hardware and services are available on an off-the-shelf basis.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 24 Mar. 2023
• Tray mounting is a simple method that is used in most off-the-shelf 60 percent keyboards.
  — Henri Robbins, WIRED, 25 Jan. 2024
• Bialas explained there are two kinds of retinol: prescription-strength and off-the-shelf products.
  — Amber Sayer, Health, 21 Sep. 2023
• That’s why, sometimes, automakers will decide to use an off-the-shelf part on their new car.
  — Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik, Quartz, 11 June 2024
• There are a growing number of off-the-shelf costumes just for stoners, from this big bag of weed to this creepy pot leaf mask.
  — Brooke Staggs, The Mercury News, 15 Oct. 2024
• Trillin would never reach for such off-the-shelf and impolite verbiage.
  — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024
• More standard options range from $25 to $65 per square foot, with some off-the-shelf versions costing even less.
  — Alyssa Longobucco, House Beautiful, 22 Feb. 2023
• The researchers used standard off-the-shelf electronics.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024
• Now, with electric motors and batteries, the most off-the-shelf commuter car can waft with the serenity of a Packard with a straight-eight.
  — Dan Neil, WSJ, 16 Mar. 2023
• Its suspension is custom-tuned for the Tacoma and isn't available as an off-the-shelf product.
  — Kristin Shaw, Ars Technica, 18 Dec. 2023
• In spite of this, off-the-shelf CAR T therapy may still be vastly prohibitive to most who need it.
  — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2023
• Simply adopting off-the-shelf gen AI tools will likely not be enough: after all, the competition can do the same.
  — Rodney Zimmel, Fortune, 24 Sep. 2024
• Could a cyberattack trigger off-the-shelf pagers to explode?
  — Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times, 18 Sep. 2024
• On the downside, both off-the-shelf and DIY pinhole cameras use film or photographic paper.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 27 Aug. 2023
• The world is not short on off-the-shelf malware, and code written for the same purpose by ChatGPT is not any better than the current offering.
  — Ryan Kalember, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2023
• In the company’s demo video, the vehicle is using nothing more than off-the-shelf cameras.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 24 Apr. 2024
• The vehicle was built in part by using off-the-shelf components, including the controller.
  — Nate Trela, USA TODAY, 28 June 2023
• What was once mostly the realm of nation-state actors or large groups can now be accomplished with turnkey, off-the-shelf software available for purchase on the dark web.
  — Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 July 2024
• The Digital Divas guide suggests using a series of off-the-shelf tools that are widely known among people who make AI art.
  — Jason Koebler, WIRED, 20 Nov. 2024
• Ashcraft says that finding the right off-the-shelf needle in a haystack gives her curatorial work more staying power.
  — Emily Evans Eerdmans, Architectural Digest, 23 July 2024
• After a mistake with the shower tile order (which would have added time and money to fix), the couple wound up buying an off-the-shelf, beige option from Home Depot.
  — Sophia Solano, Washington Post, 26 Mar. 2024
• This ends years in which the US Army struggled to find a quadcopter that works in the field, but didn’t have the risks associated with being an off-the-shelf toy pressed into military use.
  — Popular Science, 29 Nov. 2023
• That’s no mean feat considering that much of the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) chopper was built using off-the-shelf smartphone processors and cameras.
  — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 14 Apr. 2023
• At first, Kyiv was mostly using off-the-shelf equipment, either for surveillance or ingeniously adapted on the ground to drop small bombs.
  — Vasco Cotovio, CNN, 2 Apr. 2024
• In fact, Hubble Network says its technology can work over off-the-shelf Bluetooth chips through a software update, rather than any hardware change.
  — Michael Kan, PCMAG, 6 May 2024
• The fingertip sensor, made from off-the-shelf electronics, is installed on an existing prosthetic in a few hours.
  — Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Mar. 2024
• The company is one of several that offers turnkey custom design and installations, as well as off-the-shelf packages to DIY-ers that fit their needs and budget.
  — Scott Kramer, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2023
• Fortunately, businesses don’t need to start from scratch or rely on limited off-the-shelf solutions.
  — Yuriy Gnatyuk, Forbes, 6 Dec. 2024

Last Updated: 13 Feb 2025