How to Use off-the-shelf in a Sentence
off-the-shelf
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Instead of burning lots of cash to reinvent the wheel, use an off-the-shelf product.
—Expert Panel®, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2023
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That high barrier keeps many parks going back to off-the-shelf thrill rides.
—Robert Niles, Orange County Register, 5 Apr. 2024
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More and more hardware and services are available on an off-the-shelf basis.
—IEEE Spectrum, 24 Mar. 2023
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Tray mounting is a simple method that is used in most off-the-shelf 60 percent keyboards.
—Henri Robbins, WIRED, 25 Jan. 2024
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Bialas explained there are two kinds of retinol: prescription-strength and off-the-shelf products.
—Amber Sayer, Health, 21 Sep. 2023
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Trillin would never reach for such off-the-shelf and impolite verbiage.
—Dwight Garner, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024
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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
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The researchers used standard off-the-shelf electronics.
—IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024
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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
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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
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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
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On the downside, both off-the-shelf and DIY pinhole cameras use film or photographic paper.
—IEEE Spectrum, 27 Aug. 2023
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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
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In the company’s demo video, the vehicle is using nothing more than off-the-shelf cameras.
—IEEE Spectrum, 24 Apr. 2024
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The vehicle was built in part by using off-the-shelf components, including the controller.
—Nate Trela, USA TODAY, 28 June 2023
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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With a growing number of off-the-shelf enterprise generative AI tools now available, sitting on the AI sidelines is no longer an option.
—Shane Luke, Fortune, 27 Sep. 2023
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Some e-bike makers are unique, but many, especially at the low end, are little more than nameplates affixed to off-the-shelf Chinese e-bikes assembled from a catalog.
—Andrew J. Hawkins, The Verge, 29 May 2024
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Its wing shape gives it a range of up to 1,100 miles without requiring a jet engine; it’s built with readily available off-the-shelf components; and its low price means it can be launched in swarms to overwhelm defenses.
—David Hambling, Popular Mechanics, 21 Apr. 2023
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Cheap, off-the-shelf products are available online that allow for this kind of interception-and-duplication hacking scheme.
—Lucas Ropek / Gizmodo, Quartz, 13 May 2024
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Here’s Figure’s custom actuator [left] vs. an off-the-shelf actuator with equal torque.
—IEEE Spectrum, 17 Oct. 2023
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To obtain the algorithms, the researchers purchased an off-the-shelf Motorola MTM5400 radio and spent four months locating and extracting the algorithms from the secure enclave in the radio’s firmware.
—WIRED, 24 July 2023
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In the same way, custom wallpaper panels or murals are generally more expensive than off-the-shelf rolls of wallpaper.
—Randy Tucker, The Enquirer, 4 Apr. 2024
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In the same way, custom wallpaper panels or murals are generally more expensive than off-the-shelf rolls of wallpaper.
—Randy Tucker, The Enquirer, 7 Apr. 2024
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'off-the-shelf.' 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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