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instrument

[in-struh-muhnt] / ˈɪn strə mənt /




Usage

What are other ways to say instrument? An instrument is anything used in doing a certain type of work or producing a certain result, especially such as requires delicacy, accuracy, or precision: surgical or musical instruments. A tool is a contrivance held in and worked by the hand, for assisting the work of (especially) mechanics or skilled laborers: a carpenter's tools. An implement is any tool or contrivance designed or used for a particular purpose: agricultural implements. A utensil is especially an article for domestic use: kitchen utensils. 

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

For all of those reasons, CoreWeave is an important instrument for Nvidia, even if its debt-fueled business model occasionally causes investor trepidation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

By merging the strengths of interferometric scattering microscopy and advanced detector arrays, the team created an instrument capable of resolving structures as small as approximately 120 nanometers.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 17, 2026

It’s hard when you’ve spent 32 years of your adult life with Peter Buck — it’s hard to find someone who has that same enthusiasm and love of the instrument.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026

The satellite's ocean and land color instrument has already delivered detailed images of landscapes and coastlines, while its radar altimeter has produced encouraging measurements of ocean and ice sheet elevations.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026

The haunting notes didn’t resemble an organ, a piano, a fiddle, or any instrument of this world.

From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney

This is particularly concerning when instruments designed for natural teeth are used on implants, because they can scrape and damage the metal surface.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2026

“When debt instruments offer higher returns, the opportunity cost of holding gold, which pays no interest, increases,” he says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

Another option is to shift your portfolio allocations toward more fixed income — Treasury products, corporate bonds, dividend stocks, cash instruments like CDs or even just high-yield savings accounts.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 22, 2026

The recent backlash against AI-generated music has prompted “a reversion back to the real” with bands using more instruments and needing more space to record, Mihalka said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026

The layers of instruments started to pile up.

From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen

The Blue Origin spacecraft will also carry an instrumented lunar surface spacesuit mass simulator.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 23, 2026

Then we browsed the For You page feed for each sockpuppet, recording what we saw via WebArchive.page, a specially instrumented web browser that archives all the data involved in a browsing session locally.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2023

Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, a U.S. naval facility, is the world's largest instrumented, "multi-dimensional" testing and training missile range, according to the U.S.

From Fox News ● Feb. 22, 2022

The initial design for the lab, to be built over the next 5 years at the University of Idaho, calls for 24 richly instrumented soil columns topped with airtight chambers for vegetation.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 12, 2021

We are unlikely to determine the answer to this question without landing instrumented space vehicles on the Titanian surface.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

“We are instrumenting the car in a way that is overloading the driver just like we were overloading the helicopter pilots,” said Strayer, director of the university’s Center for the Prevention of Distracted Driving.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2022

This can be a result of budgetary constraints, the difficulty of instrumenting treacherous volcanoes and, in some cases, red tape preventing the placement of sensors in wilderness areas.

From New York Times ● Nov. 9, 2021

“And we need to rethink what this instrumenting of the world — all that data being generated and collected — means for privacy and how all this data is used.”

From New York Times ● Aug. 4, 2015

Yet little has been done to probe the underlying crust and mantle, mainly because instrumenting the entire state is so expensive.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 5, 2013

Niels and I get to work carefully instrumenting the sleep logger and attaching it to the bird.

From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2011


Vocabulary lists containing instrument

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