How to Use behave in a Sentence

behave

verb
Definition of behavenext
Synonyms for behavenext
  • If you can't behave in the store we'll have to leave.
  • He behaves like a child!
  • If you can't behave yourself in the store we'll have to leave.
  • I wish those children would behave themselves.
  • The experiment tested how various metals behave under heat and pressure.
  • But such data can, at best, offer hints about how the rest of the number line might behave.
    — Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 29 Nov. 2022
  • This is the textbook prescription for how a central bank should behave.
    — David Wilcox, CNN, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Then there is the question of how a norm-shattering president will behave in the weeks that follow.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 22 Oct. 2022
  • To see Rhaenyra behave and reason like Viserys adds insult to injury.
    — Lauren Puckett-Pope, ELLE, 24 Oct. 2022
  • In rocky markets, towns, universities and other small borrowers like not having to worry about how retail buyers will behave on the day of a public bond sale.
    — Heather Gillers, WSJ, 26 Oct. 2022
  • Perhaps because Americans had never before seen a president behave like this, too many made the mistake of assuming there must be something to it.
    — Arkansas Online, 18 Nov. 2022
  • Leaders might even set policies that choreograph, rather than simply capitulate to, how Americans behave.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Physicists can’t describe the dynamics of this system using the equations of hydrodynamics because the dilute gas does not behave like a liquid.
    — Anil Ananthaswamy, Scientific American, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Among them: That without guardrails, there are people who will take advantage of San Francisco’s generous spirit and behave in ways that drag the city down.
    — Hannah Wiley, Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2024
  • Once relieved of their status as objects, these paintings and sculptures behave as tokens of untraceable exchange among oligarchical speculators.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2024
  • So while cryptocurrencies may ultimately become stores of value, for now Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to behave far more like risky assets.
    — Simon Moore, Forbes, 8 Oct. 2022
  • By behaving in ways that real whip-poor-wills never do, Dunwich’s nightjars symbolize the horrors the Whateleys unleash on the townspeople.
    — Jared Del Rosso, The Conversation, 22 Oct. 2024
  • In short, that means telling the chatbot to behave in a way it has been told not to.
    — Matt Burgess, WIRED, 29 Nov. 2023
  • But behave yourself—the walls to the cabin aren’t a mile high.
    — Passport By Forbeslife, Forbes, 16 Aug. 2024
  • And in the pre-hat era, a shape would invariably behave in one of two ways.
    — Craig S. Kaplan, Scientific American, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Nance agreed to let Buckley teach Fluffy a few things about how to behave.
    — Longreads, 8 Mar. 2023
  • One of the reasons people behaved so badly, of course, was the color of their skin.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Apr. 2023
  • The best that researchers could do was lay down a long list of rules defining how a bot should behave.
    — Cade Metz, New York Times, 20 Jan. 2023
  • But the group’s members tended be well bred, well off, and well behaved to begin with.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
  • The Bear League and wildlife department agreed that Hank could no longer be free in the wild because of the way the animal behaved.
    — Praveena Somasundaram, Anchorage Daily News, 8 Aug. 2023
  • How to dress, how to walk, how to apply makeup and wear my hair, how to behave, how to return love — his way.
    — Angelique Jackson, Variety, 3 Nov. 2023
  • The issue is that bitcoin has behaved as a safe haven before.
    — Tanaya MacHeel, CNBC, 7 Aug. 2024
  • Under the rules that the Court stands by, the Justices have behaved ethically all along.
    — Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker, 21 Nov. 2023
  • Ellie bonded with the younger one, the eight-year-old Sam (Keivonn Woodard), laughed with him, found a few moments to behave like kids with him.
    — Brian Lowry, CNN, 10 Feb. 2023
  • Their thoughts on how to behave at fashion week, below.
    — Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 5 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'behave.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: