appearing as such but not necessarily so; "for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent"; "the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies"; "the ostensible truth of their theories"; "his seeming honesty"
Used in a Sentence
ostensible
How to use ostensible in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for ostensible.
Editorial note
Easier to guarantee that the ostensible sender of a message really did send it.
Examples8
Definitions2
Parts of speech1
Quick take
appearing as such but not necessarily so; "for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent"; "the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies"; "the ostensible truth of their theories"; "his seeming honesty"
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of ostensible gathered in one view.
represented or appearing as such; pretended; "His ostensible purpose was charity, his real goal popularity"
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for ostensible.
adjective
appearing as such but not necessarily so; "for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent"; "the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies"; "the ostensible truth of their theories"; "his seeming honesty"
adjective
represented or appearing as such; pretended; "His ostensible purpose was charity, his real goal popularity"
See also: ostensive
Example sentences
Easier to guarantee that the ostensible sender of a message really did send it.
Caps lock should not be changed despite it's ostensible uselessness.
The take-away is that Snapchat has seemingly flipped it's core promise - a non-permanent trail and ostensible privacy - by including this "top friends" feature.
Especially when you considered how ridiculously overpowered the hardware is for its ostensible use case!
There are some ostensible reasons for this: it soothes the feelings of customers burned by open-ended enterprise-style darken-the-skies-with-people hourly billing, and demonstratively puts the risk the consultant.
I am mostly for the ostensible cleaning up of YouTube comments, but what got me was that any time you share a YouTube video on Google+ proper or comment in a thread where someone shared a YouTube video, it automatically cross-posts what you said back to the comments underneath the video on YouTube.
For every sufficiently large organization, self-preservation and expansion inevitably crowd out the organization's ostensible purpose.
He proceeded to show up to each of my project meetings, often late and out of context, disagree out loud, offer unsolicited opinions, micromanage, and badger me into implementing his ideas -- thoroughly undermining any ostensible authority I had over the project, or reversing any progress the team had made up to that point.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use ostensible in a sentence?
Easier to guarantee that the ostensible sender of a message really did send it.
What does ostensible mean?
appearing as such but not necessarily so; "for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent"; "the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies"; "the ostensible truth of their theories"; "his seeming honesty"
What part of speech is ostensible?
ostensible is commonly used as adjective.