Definition of Major
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Examples of Major in a sentence
While the teacher was harshly disciplining the class, she was able to get her major point across to the students about keeping their hands and feet to themselves.
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After analyzing the two students’ accounts of the incident, the only major difference between the two accounts was who initiated the fight but the other discrepancies didn’t matter.
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Since the brain and the heart are major organs in the system, any damage done to them is considered a priority by doctors.
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The new delivery company decided to set up a branch in four major cities in the United States due to the high populations in those cities.
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After the repairman looked at the major system, he realized that a smaller component may be damaging the big unit costing a lot of money to repair.
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Examples of how to use the word “major” in a sentence. How to connect “major” with other words to make correct English sentences.
major (v, n, adj): to study something as your main subject at college or university; an officer of middle rank in the British, US, and many other armed forces; more important, bigger, or more serious than others of the same type
Use “major” in a sentence
| We don’t anticipate any major problems. |
| What was your major in college? |
| She majored in economics. |
| I major in English literature. |
| We have encountered major problems. |
| What’s your major? |
| I major in economics.
Back to “3000 Most Common Words in English” |
Synonym: greater, higher, larger, senior, superior. Antonym: minor. Similar words: major in. Meaning: [‘meɪdʒə(r)] 
n. 1. a commissioned military officer in the United States Army or Air Force or Marines; below lieutenant colonel and above captain 2. British statesman who was prime minister from 1990 until 1997 (born in 1943) 3. a university student who is studying a particular field as the principal subject 4. the principal field of study of a student at a university. v. have as one’s principal field of study. adj. 1. of greater importance or stature or rank 2. greater in scope or effect 3. greater in number or size or amount 4. of the field of academic study in which one concentrates or specializes 5. of a scale or mode 6. of greater seriousness or danger 7. of full legal age 8. of the elder of two boys with the same family name.
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1. The local war escalated into a major conflict.
2. His advancement to major came two years ago.
3. Major restoration work will begin in May.
4. There is a major problem with parking in London.
5. A captain is inferior to a major.
6. The captain was promoted to the rank of major.
7. She has sung soprano in many major operas.
8. She suffered a major fit last year.
9. Dr Win was a major contributor to the research.
10. The country is a major centre for money laundering.
10. Sentencedict.com is a online sentence dictionary, on which you can find nice sentences for a large number of words.
11. Tokyo and New York are major financial centres.
12. The voucher can be used at most major supermarkets.
13. Eastman Kodak is a major sponsor of the Olympics.
14. The company has evolved into a major chemical manufacturer.
15. Unemployment is a major cause of poverty.
16. He made his Major League debut as shortstop.
17. The areas under occupation contained major industrial areas.
18. Major developments are in prospect for the company.
19. Leaving home was a major event in his life.
20. Education is now a major political issue.
21. Sheffield is a major steel town.
22. The company was now set for major expansion.
23. The building has undergone major renovation.
24. He’s openly contemptuous of all the major political parties.
25. We don’t anticipate any major problems.
26. The interval between major earthquakes might be 200 years.
27. He said the issue was not a major irritant.
28. The registry holds records of all major operations.
29. We have encountered major problems.
30. Stress is a major problem of modern life.
| Meanings and Examples of MAJOR |
major
a. important, serious, or significant.
n. a chief or special subject at a university
Classic Sentence: (110 in 8 pages)
1 The major will bring his son with him this evening, the contino, as we say in Italy; he confides him to my care.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 54. A Flurry in Stocks.
2 Both the count and Baptistin had told the truth when they announced to Morcerf the proposed visit of the major, which had served Monte Cristo as a pretext for declining Albert’s invitation.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
3 «Exactly so,» said the delighted major.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
4 The major looked at the count with his large staring eyes, and then took a survey of the apartment, but his gaze almost immediately reverted to the proprietor of the room.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
5 The major looked at the count with an indescribable expression of anxiety.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
6 The major recovered his self-possession.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
7 The major awaited the conclusion of the postscript, apparently with great anxiety.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
8 «Why, really I know no one,» said the major.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
9 The major‘s eyes dilated with pleasing astonishment.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
10 The major drew an arm-chair towards him, and proceeded to seat himself.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
11 The major made a wise choice; he took the full glass and a biscuit.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
12 The worthy major raised his eyes to heaven and sighed.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
13 «Oh, no, certainly not on my own account,» said the major with a smile and a shake of the head.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
14 «His poor mother,» murmured the major, trying to get the lachrymal gland in operation, so as to moisten the corner of his eye with a false tear.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
15 «I believe so,» said the major.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre Dumas
Context Highlight In Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti.
Example Sentence: (210 in 15 pages)
16 In Western eyes, Iraq is a major power in an area of great strategic importance.
17 Dr Win was a major contributor to the research.
18 The major aviation companies need to cut prices if they are to compete with budget airlines.
19 Scientists are claiming a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
20 He was amazingly inventive and resourceful, and played a major role in my career.
21 Unemployment is a major cause of poverty.
22 The major recommendation is for a change in the law.
23 The possibility of an interest rate cut is a major talking point in the City.
24 The book proved a major commercial success.
25 The town turned from a small seaside resort into a major commercial centre when oil was discovered.
26 Changes in the industry had major repercussions for the local community.
27 The concept of interleague play in major league baseball is certainly intriguing, worthy of serious consideration.
28 That is a major advance in the concept of public service of which the Government are rightly proud.
29 The government’s major concern is with preventing accidents on the roads.
30 Several important milestones in foreign policy have been passed by this Congress and they can be chalked up as major accomplishments.
- Dictionary
- M
- Major
- Sentences
- The major factor in the decision to stay or to leave was usually professional.
- I was a major in the war, you know.
- Paul Gage is a Beverage Consultant for major beverage companies.
- This major gives students the chance to investigate the essence of what Australia is and the kind of society we have.
- English majors would be asked to explore the roots of language.
- She was named the outstanding undergraduate history major at the University of Oklahoma.
- He majored in finance at Claremont Men’s College in California. [VERB + in]
- …Mozart’s Symphony No 35 in D Major.
- Oil majors need not fear being unable to sell their crude.
- I knew what I could do in the minor leagues, I just wanted a chance to prove myself in the majors.
- Sarazen became the first golfer to win all four majors.
- The oil majors
- His major is sociology
- A sociology major
- The major part
- A major disaster
- A major key
- C major
- Price major
- To major in English literature
- The book majors on the peasant dishes
- In a major key
- To major in physics
- A music major
- The major part of the town.
- A major political issue; a major artist.
- A major operation.
- The major opinion.
- A major third; a major sixth.
- Her major field is English history.
- Hobbes Major is not of a scientific bent.
- He is majoring in physics.
- He used to be a major in the army. This is Major Jones.
- Midway through his second year of college, he still hadn’t chosen a major.
- She is a math major.
- I have decided to major in mathematics.
- The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation.
- The major part of the assembly
- A major scale.
| The Bill was then sent up to the House of Lords, a majority in which was known to be hostile to it. |
 
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| Prior to 1902, the prime minister sometimes came from the House of Lords, provided that his government could form a majority in the Commons. |
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| The referendum was held across all four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as in Gibraltar, as a single majority vote. |
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| This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. |
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| The three Maritime provinces are each entirely south of the parallel, but the vast majority of Canadian territory lies north of it. |
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| In some cases, the head of state may represent one political party but the majority in the National Assembly is of a different party. |
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| A majority of residents of Hong Kong have no religious affiliation, professing a form of agnosticism or atheism. |
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| Northern Ireland had a majority Protestant population and opted out as expected. |
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| The majority of plunder was in the form of cargo and ship’s equipment with medicines the most highly prized. |
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| All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation. |
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| The Conservatives, for example, won a majority in the 1859 general election in Ireland. |
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| The majority of Afghans, among all ethnic groups including Pashtuns, stated that the overthrowing of the Taliban was a good thing. |
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| In the United Kingdom general election, 2015, Labour held Newport West with a reduced majority of 3,510 votes over the Conservative Party. |
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| After the 2012 elections, Rufus Ewing of the Progressive National Party won a narrow majority of the elected seats and was appointed premier. |
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| The majority of the company’s production at its Busan plant is exported under the Renault badge. |
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| Hong Kong’s Han majority originate mainly from the Guangzhou and Taishan regions in Guangdong province. |
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| The Labour Party under Harold Wilson won the October 1974 election by a tiny majority of only three seats. |
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| The majority of the estimated 5,000 Muslims and 200 Hindu families living in Northern Ireland live in the Greater Belfast area. |
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| Unionists, however, won a majority of seats in four of the nine counties of Ulster and affirmed their continuing loyalty to the United Kingdom. |
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| It was at this point that Scottish Presbyterians became the majority community in the province. |
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Show More Sentences |
What is a major sentence?
A major sentence (also called a regular sentence) is any complete sentence that is made up of or contains an independent clause—that is, it has both a subject and a predicate (a verb and any of its constituent parts).
What is a minor sentence?
A minor sentence (also called an irregular sentence), on the other hand, is any sentence that does not have at least one independent clause—that is, it does not have both a subject and a complete predicate—and yet is used in writing or speech as a complete sentence that stands on its own.
All of the other sections in the chapter on Sentences deal with major sentences, so we will focus on minor sentences in this section.
Minor Sentences
Minor sentences can be made up of single words, sentence fragments, interjections, or set expressions (such as idioms and proverbs. We’ll examine several examples of each below to see how they are used in everyday English.
Single-word sentences
In conversational English, we very often use single words to get across required information in response to another person. These are known as sentence words, one-word sentences, or just word sentences. For example:
- Person A: “Where is your meeting again?” Person B: “Denver.”
- Person A: “I think it’s best that we don’t get involved.” Person B: “Agreed.”
- Person A: “When do you need these reports finished?” Person B: “Tomorrow.”
Even though the second speaker’s response is only made up of a single word in each of these examples, it contains all the relevant information that is necessary in the context of the conversation.
Sentence fragments
We also commonly use sentence fragments (phrases, incomplete clauses, or dependent clauses) as standalone sentences. Again, these are typically used in conversational English when we are responding to someone else. For example:
- Person A: “Are you going to have lunch soon?” Person B: “In about an hour.” (prepositional phrase)
- Person A: “Do you want to come to a movie with me later?” Person B: “Sounds good!” (incomplete clause)
- Person A: “When did you realize that you wanted to pursue politics?” Person B: “When I was in college.” (dependent clause)
Interjections
Single words and short phrases are also commonly used as interjections (also known as exclamations) to convey a strong emotion, such as surprise, alarm, excitement, dismay, etc. These are divided into primary and secondary interjections.
Primary interjections
Primary interjections are single words derived from sounds, rather than from existing word classes. They still have widely recognized meaning, however. Some common primary interjections are:
- argh (an expression of frustration)
- brr (an expression of being cold)
- eww (an expression of disgust)
- grr (an expression of anger)
- ooh (an expression of amazement)
- phew (an expression of relief)
Primary interjections are often linked to a major sentence with a comma, but they can also stand on their own as minor sentences, in which case they are generally punctuated with an exclamation point. For example:
- “Ooh! That’s a beautiful dress.”
- “Brr! It’s freezing in here!”
- “Eww! I hate coconuts!”
Secondary Interjections
Secondary interjections are single words or short phrases that do belong to other existing word classes. Some common secondary interjections are:
- bless you
- congratulations
- good grief
- hell
- hey
- hi
- oh my
- oh my God
- oh well
- shoot
- well
- what
- wow
Secondary interjections are also often punctuated with exclamation points. For example:
- “Oh my God! We won the lottery!”
- “Wow! What a great achievement!”
- “Congratulations! That was an impressive victory.”
However, we can also have weaker secondary interjections that are punctuated with periods, or interrogative ones that use question marks. For example:
- “Well shoot. I really thought we were going to win.”
- “Good grief. I didn’t see that coming.”
- “Well? Are we going to watch a movie?”
- “What? You don’t like coconuts?”
Idioms, Proverbs, and Set Expressions
English has a large number of expressions that have a set, established understanding, even if they technically are not grammatically complete or do not make literal sense. Many of these are idioms (expressions that have a non-literal meaning) or proverbs (short sayings that carry a basic truth or precept), though there are other expressions with set meanings that are in frequent and widespread use, as well.
There are thousands of such phrases, so we will only cover a few here that are considered minor sentences. To learn more, check out The Free Dictionary’s Complete Guide to Idioms, Proverbs, and Phrasal Verbs.
Idioms
Idioms are phrases whose meaning cannot be gleaned from the literal words they’re composed of, often having a unique grammatical structure. Because of this, they are frequently used in ways that go against traditional grammar rules, and they are often used as sentences unto themselves in conversation. For example:
- Person A: “Hi, how are you?” Person B: “Hey, Jeff! Long time no see!”
- “Be more careful next time, or there might not be a ‘next time.’ Catch my drift?”
- Person A: “How can you evict us from our house like this?” Person B: “Orders are orders.”
- Person A: “When will you have that report ready for me?” Person B: “Any minute now!”
Idioms are so frequently used and understood in everyday speech and writing that they are often truncated or abbreviated, with the full phrase left to be implicitly understood by the listener or reader. For instance:
- Person A: “I went through all the trouble of getting her this job, and she still managed to screw it up.” Person B: “Well, you can lead a horse to water.” (Short for “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”)
- Person A: “I took them to the best restaurant in town, but they said they would rather have had cheeseburgers.” Person B: “What do you expect? Pearls before swine.” (Short for “cast (one’s) pearls before swine.”)
Proverbs
Proverbs are similar to idioms in that their codified meaning is widely understood due to frequent and widespread use. Proverbs are self-contained sentences that express a truth based on common sense or shared experience. Many of them have become pared down into minor sentences over time. For example:
- “You should try and form better habits in your day-to-day routine. Early to bed, early to rise, that sort of thing!” (Short for “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”)
- “I’m not sure why people are shocked that he’s suspected of stealing. If the shoe fits.” (Short for “If the shoe fits, wear it.”)
- “Sure, bring your friends. The more the merrier!”
Other set expressions
There are other common expressions that stand on their own as minor sentences that are not necessarily idiomatic or proverbial but nevertheless have a particular meaning that is inherently understood. (Many of these are forms of (or similar to) the interjections that we looked at above.)
Expressions of greeting and farewell are a prime example of set expressions that function as or form minor sentences. For example:
- “Hello! How are you?”
- “Good afternoon! It’s a pleasure to see you.”
- “I’m afraid I must depart. Good day, gentlemen.”
- “Goodbye. I hope we meet again.”
Expressions of well wishes operate the same way:
- “I hear you have a big exam coming up. Good luck!”
- “This is a big trip you’re undertaking. Godspeed!”
Some set expressions have been adapted from other languages, as in:
- “Bon voyage! Enjoy your trip abroad!” (From French, expressing good wishes to a departing traveler.)
- “I hope you enjoy the meal. Bon appétit, everyone!” (From French, a salutation to someone about to eat.)
- “Gesundheit!” (From German, meaning “health,” used in English as a verbal response to someone who has sneezed.)