CONTRIVE in a Sentence

Learn CONTRIVE from example sentences; some of them are from classic books. These examples are selected from a corpus with 300,000 sentences, including classic works and current mainstream media. Some sentences also link to their contexts.

124 example sentences for CONTRIVE, such as:

1. You must contrive to send somebody.
2. Can you contrive to escape here early?
3. They contrived a mask against poison gas.
4. How they contrive to be so God only knows.
5. They wear simple clothes and shun modern contrivances.

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 Meanings and Examples of CONTRIVE
Definition Example Sentence Classic Sentence
contrive
 v.  form by an exercise of ingenuity; devise; invent; design
Classic Sentence: (118 in 8 pages)
1  I know what's good for them, or I try to, and then I just contrive to manage them for their own good.
Lady Chatterley's Lover By D H Lawrence
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 16
2  Mrs. Norris offered to contrive his dress, Mr. Yates assured him that Anhalt's last scene with the Baron admitted a good deal of action and emphasis, and Mr. Rushworth undertook to count his speeches.
Mansfield Park By Jane Austen
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XVII
3  I have been slaving myself till I can hardly stand, to contrive Mr. Rushworth's cloak without sending for any more satin; and now I think you may give me your help in putting it together.
Mansfield Park By Jane Austen
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XVIII
4  Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.
Persuasion By Jane Austen
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 9
5  Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she walks out on fine days with the chiel.
Return of the Native By Thomas Hardy
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 6: 3 The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
6  My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In VII
7  Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his head sufficiently to contrive to murmur some such compliment as might fittingly come from a middle-aged individual of a rank neither excessively high nor excessively low.
Dead Souls By Nikolai Gogol
Context  Highlight   In PART 1: CHAPTER I
8  Meditating in solitude, he fell to thinking how best he could contrive to recompense his guest for the latter's measureless benevolence.
Dead Souls By Nikolai Gogol
Context  Highlight   In PART 1: CHAPTER VI
9  How they contrive to be so God only knows.
Dead Souls By Nikolai Gogol
Context  Highlight   In PART 1: CHAPTER VIII
10  "However, we must contrive to wet our bargain somehow," continued Khlobuev.
Dead Souls By Nikolai Gogol
Context  Highlight   In PART 2: CHAPTER IV
11  We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man.
Notes from the Underground By Feodor Dostoevsky
Context  Highlight   In PART 2: X
12  Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.
Notes from the Underground By Feodor Dostoevsky
Context  Highlight   In PART 2: X
13  You never can tell what mischief these men may contrive.
A Doll's House By Henrik Ibsen
Context  Highlight   In ACT II
14  You must contrive to send somebody.
Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 37
15  The queen commanded her own cabinet-maker to contrive a box, that might serve me for a bedchamber, after the model that Glumdalclitch and I should agree upon.
Gulliver's Travels 1 By Jonathan Swift
Context  Highlight   In PART 2: CHAPTER III.
Example Sentence:
1  Can you contrive to escape here early?
2  That kind of contrived writing is usually done when someone is weaseling or lying.
3  They contrived a mask against poison gas.
4  They are discussing a belief that the universe is a mechanical contrivance.
5  But a single touch of contrivance spoils it all. Any time we feel the authors creating coincidence or engineering emotion, making melodrama rather than musical drama.
6  They wear simple clothes and shun modern contrivances.