How to Use gape in a Sentence

gape

1 of 2 verb
Definition of gapenext
Synonyms for gapenext
  • The crater gapes at about 13 miles wide and 2.6 miles deep.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 21 Sep. 2023
  • What could the world do to fill this gaping hole in chip supply?
    — Rob Toews, Forbes, 7 May 2023
  • Young men with haggard faces and gaping mouths roamed the streets.
    — Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2023
  • Dry river mouths gape among dunes the height of cathedrals.
    — Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 21 Dec. 2018
  • Several of them saw a gaping hole in the back of JFK's head.
    — Jacquelynn Lueth, CBS News, 15 Nov. 2023
  • The Grand Canyon this is not — but the cracks were sizable enough to make visitors gape.
    — Giulia McDonnell Nieto Del Rio, latimes.com, 9 July 2019
  • Now, their white, brick, 7,000-square-foot colonial has gaping holes in the roof.
    — Dan Stillman, Washington Post, 30 July 2023
  • By 2008 it had been razed, leaving a gaping hole in the city center.
    — Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books, 4 May 2023
  • The other struck the back of his upper right arm, pierced the shoulder joint and opened up a gaping hole on the way out.
    — Manuel Canales, Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2023
  • When to get help Get help if a wound is large, gaping, or gushing blood.
    — Stacey Colino, Parents, 20 Sep. 2023
  • The letters are jammed in among gaping eyes and open mouths of sometimes skull-like heads.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2023
  • Above, the roof has caved in multiple times and light from the sky comes through a gaping hole behind the pump.
    — Sara Sidner, CNN, 25 Mar. 2023
  • Each death is a daub of paint on a vast canvas, but for the bereaved, each opens up a gaping chasm of grief.
    — Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2023
  • Mack rolled Templer over and could see a gaping hole in his back and plugged it with Saran Wrap from a plate of snacks.
    — Forrest Brown, CNN, 12 Apr. 2023
  • Holmes’s bold sweater also revived the cold-shoulder trend, with two gaping holes on the top halves of the sleeves.
    — Chelsey Sanchez, Harper's BAZAAR, 23 June 2023
  • Some buildings have gaping holes blown through the middle of them.
    — Serhii Korolchuk, Washington Post, 28 Oct. 2023
  • With Ertz moving back to fill the gaping hole left by Sauerbrunn, the US midfield has yet to be a strength.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 27 July 2023
  • If you’ve been left in a gaping void by the end of Succession, don’t despair.
    — Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 June 2023
  • And for spider bites, some say that the bite from a wind scorpion leaves a gaping, gangrenous hole all the way to the bone.
    — Jeremy Hillpot, Discover Magazine, 10 June 2023
  • Those on board described wind blowing through a gaping hole that showed the night sky and the city lights below.
    — Niraj Chokshi, New York Times, 7 Jan. 2024
  • Two plays later, Green ran through a gaping hole to score for a 5-yard touchdown run.
    — al, 25 Aug. 2023
  • From the driveway, a huge hole in the side of the house gaped open, showing the haphazard contents of the master bedroom.
    — Henri Hollis, ajc, 27 Mar. 2023
  • About three-fourths of the mayor’s home slid down into gaping rent in the earth, but strangely enough, was not crushed.
    — Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 May 2023
  • Max 9, leaving a gaping hole in the left side of the aircraft and causing oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling.
    — Eden Villalovas, Washington Examiner, 12 Jan. 2024
  • The passenger said his seatbelt saved him from being sucked out of the gaping hole.
    — Cara Tabachnick, CBS News, 22 Mar. 2024
  • Who, in that summer of suffering, was going to send a woman with a gaping head wound back to camp in the rough?
    — Michelle Theriault Boots, Anchorage Daily News, 22 July 2023
  • The rule: Blazers will gape open awkwardly in the front or lie awkwardly against your body.
    — Charles Manning, Cosmopolitan, 26 Apr. 2017
  • In the second photo, the brain of a young boy is visible through a gaping hole in his skull that extends from his forehead to the top of the head.
    — Sarah El Sirgany, CNN, 27 Apr. 2023
  • Which is why any trip to Iceland should include a stop here, to gape at the bobbing icebergs floating in the water.
    — Susan Glaser, cleveland.com, 11 May 2018
  • Imago Fulvio also has a key to the side door, so guides can bring groups in to gape at the Renaissance frescoes.
    — Andrea Bartz, Vogue, 17 Aug. 2017
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gape

2 of 2 noun
  • I told him to stop staring, that his rather stupid gape was annoying.
  • The boat’s net courses through the water like a gape-mouthed whale shark.
    — Craig Welch, National Geographic, 13 Jan. 2023
  • Bats adjust their mouth gape to zoom their biosonar field of view.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 8 May 2015
  • The fish’s wide-eyed gape takes center stage, mesh tugging at its open mouth.
    — Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Feb. 2020
  • An enormous cast of the sharp-toothed jaw of a megalodon gapes open, wide and high enough to gobble a grown man.
    — Susan Dunne, courant.com, 3 July 2019
  • According to the Guinness Book of World Records, no one on the planet has a wider mouth gape.
    — Neal Justin, Star Tribune, 8 July 2021
  • Watch their mouths gape open as their pile of goodies dwindles!
    — Fox News, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Imagine one with a tie that wraps around your waist so smoothly the tiny hole the belt snakes through never gapes.
    — Elizabeth Wellington, Philly.com, 7 June 2018
  • In the portrait, Hemingway scans the distance; his tie and collar gape at the neck.
    — Elizabeth Djinis, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2021
  • The researchers questioned whether there is even an upper limit to the gape of some of the very biggest pythons.
    — Christian Edwards, CNN, 7 Oct. 2022
  • On Friday, customers at the Ocean Avenue Walgreens stopped to gape at a sign in the front window.
    — Rachel Swan, Danielle Echevarria, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Oct. 2021
  • To deepen the illusion that life is just one big fashion spread, we've been trained to 1) smize, 2) duck face, 3) squinch, and now, 4) fish gape.
    — Chelsea Peng, Marie Claire, 1 Oct. 2015
  • Caves a thousand miles apart show the same gape-mouthed, extra-manly drawings.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 29 Feb. 2012
  • The duck face, the fish gape, the vague arm raise – getting a likeable Inta involves a lot of really random trends.
    — Kelsey Stiegman, Seventeen, 24 Jan. 2018
  • Her mouth gape measures 6.56 centimeters, or about two and a half inches.
    — Rachel Trent, CNN, 31 July 2021
  • This ivory-white bird will perch at the top of a dead tree, high in the montane forests of northern Brazil, and gape open his mouth to issue a grating, hair-raising screech.
    — Liz Langley, National Geographic, 21 Oct. 2019
  • Its fins flare, its mouth gapes and its body spasms as the metal filament proceeds along the length of its spine, destroying nerves.
    — The Economist, 4 Oct. 2019
  • The boy had run out into the road to gape at a helicopter pulling security for Power’s team of VIPs.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 23 Jan. 2018
  • The shop’s door is open to the street, attracting customers who glimpse something intriguing, step inside and stop to gape.
    — Mary Carole McCauley, baltimoresun.com, 13 Apr. 2021
  • Lines snake around almost every tent, inside of which crowds gape at the latest iteration of the revered god.
    — Geeta Anand, New York Times, 15 Sep. 2016
  • Pythons had a 4 to 6 times greater maximal gape area than similarly-sized brown tree snakes.
    — Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Dec. 2022
  • Their lower jaws can unhinge to give them a massive gape and their flexible skulls are made of bones that can move against each other.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 1 Mar. 2010
  • Dolphin S brings out the fish with lips flaring in the posterior half of the gape area to show the upper tooth row and gular area expanding.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 1 Jan. 2023
  • As the happy, purposeful crowd pushes into school, the bully is left to gape and blush, alone and ostracized.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Picturesque anytime of year, that route is especially gape-worthy in fall, when the trees flaunt their brilliant golds and reds.
    — Jeanine Barone, WSJ, 10 June 2021
  • The gape-mouthed expression of these primates has long been considered an act of yawning or stretching.
    — Josie Garthwaite, Discover Magazine, 28 Oct. 2012
  • But that vision belongs in the realm of rapturous poetry, not for us film lovers to gape in awestruck amazement at the foolishness.
    — Los Angeles Times, 24 Sep. 2021
  • Being gape-limited is a problem for many types of animals.
    — Jackson Landers, Smithsonian, 17 Feb. 2017
  • That much is clear from the ruins of Boston, where craters from bygone missiles gape beneath tilting highrises wrapped in plate-like Polypores.
    — Randall Colburn, EW.com, 23 Jan. 2023
  • Exit wounds gape open on enemies hit by headshots, their lifeless eyes staring blankly.
    — WIRED, 18 Oct. 2022

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