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function
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

function as in:  Its main function is to...

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The function of the lens of the eye is to focus light on the retina.
function = job or purpose
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Scientist do not know all the functions that the nutrient performs.
    functions = purposes or natural activities
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    There was no omnidirectional treadmill, because the room itself served that function.  (source)
    function = purpose or job
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    Without wisdom I could not fulfill my function of advising the Committee of Elders when they call upon me.  (source)
    function = job
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Show 10 more with 6 word variations
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    Each performs its own exact function as a unique being, and everything would be a symphony of peace if the hand that wrote all this had stopped on the fifth day of creation.  (source)
    function = job or natural activity
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    It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction-and defense.  (source)
    functions = natural activities
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    As images he'd taken just a month earlier, of Fatima, Nargiz, and their classmates, smiling over their textbooks in the newly built Gultori Girls Refugee School, flashed across the screen, Mortenson noticed a professorial-looking middle-aged male customer leaning around a corner, trying to unobtrusively study a display of multifunction digital watches.  (source)
    multifunction = characterized by having multiple purposes
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    There might be regression to an even more primitive level of functioning.  (source)
    functioning = activity
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    They turned into a gray, anonymous building which had two functionless pillars on either side of the door and an immense plain of imitation marble and leather beyond it.†  (source)
    functionless = without purpose, job, or natural activity
    standard suffix: The suffix "-less" in functionless means without and reverses the meaning of function. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
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    From what I'd heard about Mother, she might have insisted I be sent to school — the Alma Ladies' College, or some such worthy, dreary institution — to learn something functional but equally dreary, like shorthand; but as for a debut, that would have been vanity.  (source)
    functional = useful
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    I hope the story of my life and Wes's will serve a similar function in the lives of readers.  (source)
    function = purpose
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    Crude references to bodily functions usually put a stop to Myra.  (source)
    functions = natural activities
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    He referred to a subsystem of the BQQ-5 multifunction submarine sonar.†  (source)
    multifunction = characterized by having multiple purposes
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    Motor activity impaired; general reduction of glandular functioning; accelerated loss of coordination; and strong indications of progressive amnesia.  (source)
    functioning = activity
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function as in:  can't function well without sleep

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I don't function well on less than six hours of sleep a night; and I do best on nine.
function = work or operate
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    My brain does not function as well when I'm under stress.
    function = work
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    Moderate exercise improves brain function.
    function = operation (how well it works)
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    The computer isn't functioning properly.
    functioning = working or operating
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Show 10 more with 9 word variations
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    The computer isn't functional.
    functional = working
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    If the hurricane is bad, the school gym will function as an emergency shelter.
    function = work or operate
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    The kitchen table also functions as a study desk.
    functions = works or operates
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    All the park systems are back, and functioning correctly.  (source)
    functioning = working
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    Ender did not understand how the game functioned anymore.  (source)
    functioned = worked or operated
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    This took time: the telephone company was struggling under the sudden load and also to repair infrastructure destroyed in the fighting, and so Saeed's office landline worked at best intermittently, and when it did, an operator could be swatted out of the swarm of busy tones only rarely, and that operator was—despite Saeed's desperate entreaties, desperate entreaties being common in those days—limited to giving out a maximum of two numbers per call, and when Saeed finally did obtain a new pair of numbers to try, more often than not one or both proved to be nonfunctional on any given day, and he had to ring and ring and ring again.†  (source)
    nonfunctional = the quality of not working or not operating
    standard prefix: The prefix "non-" in nonfunctional means not and reverses the meaning of functional. This is the same pattern you see in words like nonfat, nonfiction, and nonprofit.
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    The house looked less functionally bare than it had in Daddy's day, and the white brocade couch formed the centerpiece of a living-room suite that included a new co-ordinating wing-back chair and an oak side table.†  (source)
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    So-called computermen—programmers, really—of Authority's civil service stood watches in outer read-out room and never went in machines room unless telltales showed misfunction.†  (source)
    misfunction = work or operate wrongly
    standard prefix: The prefix "mis-" in misfunction means wrong and reverses the meaning of function. This is the same pattern you see in words like misunderstand, misbehave, and misuse.
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    The DeLorean came outfitted with a (nonfunctioning) flux capacitor, but I'd made several additions to its equipment and appearance.  (source)
    nonfunctioning = not working
    standard prefix: The prefix "non-" in nonfunctioning means not and reverses the meaning of functioning. This is the same pattern you see in words like nonfat, nonfiction, and nonprofit.
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    You're the key to the correct functioning of the gate.  (source)
    functioning = operation (to work properly)
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function as in:  I'm attending a function tonight

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I promised to attend their function tonight. I think it's important that we show our support.
function = social event or ceremony
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    She attends a lot of school functions.
    functions = social events or ceremonies
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    It's a function celebrating gay rights.
    function = social event or ceremony
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    I have just been notified that there is to be a private function in the Yellow Room, after all.  (source)
    function = event
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    There weren't a lot of people who were equipped to babysit for Auggie, so Mom and Dad brought him to all my class plays and concerts and recitals, all the school functions, the bake sales and the book fairs.  (source)
    functions = social events
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    She continued to haul me around from function to function — Junior League meetings, political bun-fests, committees for this and that — and to park me on chairs and in corners, while she did the necessary socializing.  (source)
    function = event
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    I wanted to meet you all and see my sister again, but I hate it when these things turn into state functions.  (source)
    functions = social events that are a duty
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    She stayed at the function for all of one hour, then bolted.  (source)
    function = social event
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    She was down, low down-sleeping a lot, missing work, even missing church functions.  (source)
    functions = events
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    Look at me: the life of every social function in Paris.  (source)
    function = social event
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    He had seventeen nieces and nephews, and though he sometimes felt out of place at family functions, since he was a bachelor again in a family of happily married people, his brothers were respectful enough not to probe the reasons behind the divorce.  (source)
    functions = events
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    It was a half-page torn out of The Times of about ten years earlier — the top half of the page, so that it included the date — and it contained a photograph of the delegates at some Party function in New York.  (source)
    function = event
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    For fourteen years, their relatives in Minnesota had written of family functions the African Mortensons had to miss and sent newspaper clippings about the Minnesota Twins, which Greg preserved in his room and reread at night, artifacts from an exotic culture he hoped to understand.  (source)
    functions = events
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    "It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing," she told Bernard. But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of that innocuous function.  (source)
    function = social event or ceremony
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function as in:  oxygen is a function of altitude

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Their success is a function of their teamwork and practice.
function = result
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Expertise is largely a function of hours spent on task.
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    They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things.  (source)
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    If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life's fundamental core.  (source)
    functions = results
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    What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.  (source)
    function = result
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    We assume that being good at things like calculus and algebra is a simple function of how smart someone is.  (source)
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    He's still talking -- his voice sounds whistly and gaseous, like a pipe organ gone bad, because of the changes in his skull-but it's just a brainstem function, just a twitch in the vocal cords.  (source)
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    Like the symbolic imagination, this is a function of being able to distance oneself from the story, to look beyond the purely affective level of plot, drama, characters.  (source)
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    A counselor friend of Mom's once said that's merely a function of adolescence—that teenagers are into separating from our parents and others in authority in order to establish our independence.  (source)
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    The fact that he didn't win in Macon wasn't a reflection of how well he rode, but rather a function of the quality of the bulls.  (source)
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    This made the opportunity to study a function of how much money one had.  (source)
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    How good people's decisions are under the fast-moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training and rules and rehearsal.  (source)
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    On the display screen, he saw what he wanted: growth of Andromeda as a function of pH, of acidity-alkalinity.  (source)
    function = saying the amount of something is determined by the amount of something else
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    Coincidence accounted for nearly everything else and was simply a function of mathematical probability.  (source)
    function = result
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function as in:  Amazon's new search function

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I like Amazon's new search function.
function = computer code that performs a specific task
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    The program has a built-in function that does that with a single user request.
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    The keyboard had a row of function keys at the top, just like a regular PC keyboard, and the monitor was big and in color.  (source)
    function = To tell a computer to perform specific tasks
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    There should be a search function.  (source)
    function = computer code that performs a specific task
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    Most databases have a search function built in—libraries, museums, universities, governments.  (source)
    function = computer code that performs a specific task
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    Mortenson was amazed by the computer's cut and paste and copy functions.  (source)
    functions = computer code capabilities
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    It's got a graphing function and everything.  (source)
    function = computer code that performs a specific task
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    I spent the whole first week of nav school frowning at a desk in front of a Toughbook laptop computer, learning the computer's functions, how to hook up to a GPS and manipulate the satellite imagery and maps.  (source)
    functions = computer code modules each of which perform a specific task
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    His personal computer had a multimedia function that allowed him to look at a copy of the famous videotape showing a driver being shot by the Texas Highway Killer.  (source)
    function = computer code that performs a specific task
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    It had obviously acquired a great number of functions, but was it capable of having real feelings?  (source)
    functions = computer code modules each of which perform a specific task
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    ...his Texas Instruments TI-82, with graphing function;  (source)
    function = computer code that performs specific tasks
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    ...you could always argue that no matter how elaborate the program, it was basically an extension of the programmer's will and the operations of causal machines merely represented functions of intelligence, rather than intelligence in its own right backed by a will of its own.  (source)
    functions = computer code modules each of which perform a specific task
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    Everything in your computer, the plastic, silicon and mylar, every logical operation and processing function, the memory, the hardware, the software, the ones and zeroes, the triads inside the pixels that form the on-screen image—it all culminates here.  (source)
    function = computer code that performs specific tasks
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    He adds components and functions and sits before a spreading mass of compatible hardware.  (source)
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function as in:  a mathematical function

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Since there is less oxygen at high altitudes, to know how much oxygen is available at the top of any mountain, you will need a function that converts altitude to available oxygen.
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    This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function.  (source)
    function = mathematical expression that describe a relationship between variables
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    He flips to question four, his hand sweaty and cramping, and reads it with astonishment: "Find the 2nd degree Taylor polynomial and the remainder at A = 0 for the function f(x) = 3(x + 1)."  (source)
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    He had described generally how scientists arrive at facts and theories but now he penetrated narrowly into his own personal experience with the mathematical functions that established his early fame.  (source)
    functions = a mathematical expression that describes a relationship between variables
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    The Roche limit is usually expressed as a function of the densities of the bodies and the equatorial radius of the larger body.  (source)
    function = mathematical expression that describe a relationship between variables
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    Surveying the room, Cedric decides to display his mastery and answers a question about inverse trigonometric functions.  (source)
    functions = mathematical expressions--each of which describe a relationship between variables
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    He moves easily through the algebraic functions on the next few questions, hunched close to his paper, writing quickly and neatly, the pencil's eraser end wiggling near his ear.  (source)
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    Finally, he begins to write: "The part that most interested me was finding the identity of the trigonometric functions."  (source)
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    He reels off ten lines of tangent, sine, and cosine functions, an intricate equation springing effortlessly from his memory, and arrives at a proof.  (source)
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    "Well, L'Hopital's rule, I mean I already had that," says Cedric about a rule to define the limit of functions, which he worked on at MIT.  (source)
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    As Berman scribbles ahead toward logarithmic functions, Cedric wonders if he's wrong to be so proud, and his mind slips back to something Long had said a few weeks ago in a Sunday sermon about the sin of pride, one of Bishop's favorite subjects.  (source)
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    The next two, though, are ticklish-one dealing with various series equations and whether their functions would converge or diverge; on the other, he needs to locate the power series in two functions.  (source)
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    The next two, though, are ticklish-one dealing with various series equations and whether their functions would converge or diverge; on the other, he needs to locate the power series in two functions.  (source)
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