toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

tenable
used in a sentence

(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition defensible — especially of an opinion or a position
  • Our position became less and less tenable.
tenable = defensible — especially of an opinion or a position
  • How can a slave also be a brother? Christians began to see the situation as untenable.
    Dinesh D'Souza  --  What's So Great About Christianity
  • "I really wonder, sir," rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, "to find you taking a position so untenable."
    Charles Dickens  --  Hard Times
    • untenable = not defensible
  • The more I thought about it, the more untenable my position seemed to be.
    Marcus Luttrell  --  Lone Survivor
    • untenable = not defensible
  • I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?
    Arthur Conan Doyle  --  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    • tenable = possible to defend
  • The situation is entirely untenable, and I know it.
    Sara Gruen  --  Water for Elephants
    • untenable = not defensible
  • For any thinking person, it's untenable.
    Ron Suskind  --  A Hope in the Unseen
    • untenable = not defensible
  • The situation was becoming untenable, anyway.
    Alexs Pate  --  Amistad
    • untenable = not defensible
  • this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale,
    Douglas Adams  --  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    • tenable = defensible
  • Your position is untenable.
    Eoin Colfer  --  Artemis Fowl
    • untenable = not defensible
  • I cannot conceal from you, sir, that the camp will not be much longer tenable;
    James Fenimore Cooper  --  The Last of the Mohicans
    • tenable = defensible
  • I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still;
    William Shakespeare  --  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
    • tenable = defensible
  • SAC's bases in Africa and Spain would be untenable and melt away.
    Pat Frank  --  Alas, Babylon
    • untenable = not defensible
  • There are always untenable events, freak happenings like someone recognizing you, or at worst, the trouble results from a foolish and negligent spy, like my time with Luzan.
    Chang-rae Lee  --  Native Speaker
    • untenable = not defendable
  • But in the moonlight she could imagine people scrambling over flaming cars to escape the crumbling city, panicking in their flight from this untenable pile of metal and stone.
    Scott Westerfeld  --  Uglies
    • untenable = not defensible
  • I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; ... tadpoles which herons gobble up ... we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. ... Compassion is a very untenable ground.
    Henry David Thoreau  --  Walden
    • untenable = not defensible
  • The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable.
    Hugo, Victor  --  Notre-Dame de Paris
  • We are about to find ourselves, my friends, in a position that would not be tenable for people without brains.
    Dumas, Alexandre  --  Ten Years Later
  • You can appreciate that under these conditions, our situation had become untenable.
    Jules Verne  --  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
  • The prairie became a gruesome, ghastly shambles; and the camps were almost untenable because of flies and bugs, ticks and mosquitoes.
    Zane Grey  --  The Thundering Herd

Dictionary / pronunciation — Google®Dictionary list — Onelook.com®
Search for other examples by interest
Interest — Source
General — Google News®
General — Time® Magazine
General — Twitter®