Sample Sentences for
prone
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

prone as in:  prone to

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    The region is prone to drought.
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    Ginny seemed very prone to knocking things over whenever Harry entered a room.  (source)
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    Then, too, the elephant was prone to colds, particularly during winter.  (source)
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    Dr. Reynolds said if we had been boil-prone things would have been different, but we doubted it.  (source)
    prone = susceptible (tending to suffer from)
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    Gorillas aren't chatty, like humans, prone to gossip and bad jokes.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency (to do something)
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    I found this dubious, since Paolo was prone to serious injury, but as a god, I had learned never to turn down offerings.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency
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    I climbed trees and was prone to fall out of them.  (source)
    prone = had a tendency (to do something)
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    He was softer, more prone to laugh.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency
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    The advance guard which came down the street from the railroad station consisted of a number of Jeeps, being driven with a certain restraint, their gyration-prone wheels inactive on these old ways which offered nothing bumpier than a few cobblestones.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency (to do something)
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    In part because they were new technology, and in part because they were used so heavily, planes were prone to breakdowns.  (source)
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    We Afghans are prone to a considerable degree of exaggeration, bachem, and I have heard many men foolishly labeled great.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency
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    Risa has gotten to know an overweight girl prone to tears, a girl wound up from a week of nicotine withdrawal, and a girl who was a ward of the state, just like her—and also just like Risa, an unwitting victim of budget cuts.  (source)
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    She was fond of eating vegetables but people said the key was to have as many calories stashed away as possible, and so foods like vegetables, which were bulky for the amount of energy they could provide, and also prone to spoilage, were less useful.  (source)
    prone = with a tendency (to do something)
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prone as in:  prone position

•
The victim was found prone on the floor.
prone = lying face down
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    80% of children who died of sudden infant death syndrome had been lying in a prone position.
    prone = face down
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    Russell and Piper lie prone at the hole.  (source)
    prone = lying face downward
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    Whatever T.J.'s reply, it obviously was not what Kaleb Wallace wanted to hear, for he pulled his leg back and kicked T.J.'s swollen stomach with such force that T.J. emitted a cry of awful pain and fell prone upon the ground.  (source)
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    In the first room he saw a thin rumpled figure lying prone on a sofa: Dana's father, holding what appeared to be an ice pack to his forehead.  (source)
    prone = face down
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    But his family labored under a plainness so virulent that the dullness of his wife and children outshone even their proneness to illness, which was remarkable.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
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    He's probably prone; we don't want to step over him.  (source)
    prone = lying face downward
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    In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine.†  (source)
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    A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, prone where he had fallen, quite still.  (source)
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    A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.†  (source)
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    The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!  (source)
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    In the affair of love, which, out of strict conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease, this proneness to relapse is no less conspicuous.†  (source)
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    He waited there, awkwardly prone, while a telephone began ringing over the small speaker.  (source)
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    Nevertheless, he caught sight of the archdeacon prone upon the earth in the mud.  (source)
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