How to Use hypothetical in a Sentence

hypothetical

adjective
Definition of hypotheticalnext
Synonyms for hypotheticalnext
  • She described a hypothetical case to clarify her point.
  • Specifically, the words were part of a hypothetical news headline.
    — Justin Gomez, ABC News, 21 May 2024
  • In other words, the existential threat posed by these powers was not merely hypothetical.
    — Eric Levitz, Vox, 3 June 2024
  • Even if it’s powered with a filthy diesel generator — that’s a hypothetical — one house isn’t going to bring the global climate crashing down.
    — Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times, 14 May 2024
  • One question that most of the models got wrong related to a 75-year-old woman with a hypothetical heart condition.
    — Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Shani Benezra, CNBC, 18 July 2024
  • Stopping the program in its tracks is not a decision with merely hypothetical consequences.
    — New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 22 July 2024
  • Trump did marginally better in four of the seven key states in a hypothetical race including the additional candidates.
    — James Rainey, Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2024
  • Soto answered the hypothetical in an affirmative manner, but Yankees fans shouldn’t read into that too much.
    — Gary Phillips, New York Daily News, 24 May 2024
  • Superintelligence is the idea of a future, hypothetical AI system that would be smarter than all humans combined.
    — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 21 May 2024
  • The national Trump-Harris polls to date were conducted before Biden dropped out of the race, and therefore purely hypothetical.
    — Dave Lawler, Axios, 22 July 2024
  • Then come the hypothetical roofs, the might-have-been roofs, the roofs that are no more.
    — By Michael Browning, miamiherald, 25 Aug. 2015
  • The judge based the amount of the award on a hypothetical license fee that the party might have paid to use the song.
    — NBC News, 25 Oct. 2017
  • Of course, the hypothetical does not come out of nowhere.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 10 Aug. 2017
  • Like the hypothetical beer case, this case against Walmart mocks the rule of law.
    — Michael I. Krauss, WSJ, 27 Dec. 2020
  • But in that hypothetical world, the math wasn’t adding up.
    — Joanne Solomon, Longreads, 1 July 2017
  • That’s the big hypothetical, though: whether this was a move the Indians had to make.
    — Jon Tayler, SI.com, 31 July 2019
  • But this grand alignment of the aggrieved has been moving from the realm of the hypothetical...
    — Graham T. Allison and, WSJ, 29 Jan. 2019
  • At some hypothetical point, the drama around the show will be drowned out by the show itself.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 1 Feb. 2017
  • The romance is all still hypothetical; the sheer joy is not.
    — The New York Times, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2022
  • Of course, the string of reasons behind the mass deaths is all still hypothetical.
    — Popular Science, 18 Sep. 2020
  • To be sure, this is all hypothetical for the time being.
    — Robert Verbruggen, National Review, 18 Aug. 2020
  • What isn’t clear is how much this risk is hypothetical rather than proven, or what the United States should do about it.
    — Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2023
  • The risk is hypothetical, and Merck says it has not been borne out in its studies.
    — Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, Arkansas Online, 24 Dec. 2021
  • That is, and will be, one of the great hypothetical questions of this election cycle.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Maybe that’s not the best hypothetical question to pose.
    — Evan Grant, Dallas News, 1 Aug. 2023
  • According to the Times poll, Biden and Trump are tied in a hypothetical rematch at forty-three per cent.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2023
  • The big question: Where to put these hypothetical new schools?
    — Juliette Mavroleon, miamiherald, 17 June 2018
  • So the value of the options is more hypothetical than real at this point.
    — Chris Isidore, CNN, 10 July 2020
  • Trump comes out on top of a hypothetical one-on-one matchup with DeSantis 51% to 38% too.
    — Ben Kamisar, NBC News, 21 Apr. 2023
  • The worry, though hypothetical, is one that should not be dismissed out of hand.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 22 Feb. 2018

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