How to Use has-been in a Sentence

has-been

noun

• DiCaprio makes a great, vital has-been, squinting at the horrors around him in disbelief, but mostly, driven by the need to protect his child.
  — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 18 Sep. 2025
• In the Seventies, he was mocked as a Vegas has-been in a jumpsuit; in the Eighties, as a cultural colonizer.
  — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 19 Feb. 2026
• All this success begs the legitimate question of how the once-struggling reality show for has-been celebrities reinvented itself and became a pop-cultural phenomenon that any public figure would be lucky to utilize as their re-introduction into the zeitgeist.
  — Mckinley Franklin, HollywoodReporter, 25 Nov. 2025
• Ken Blake Brea Sorry to see Jerry Neuheisel leave UCLA to join traitor and coaching has-been Chip Kelly at Northwestern.
  — Los Angeles Times, 3 Jan. 2026
• Brett Goldstein’s seething has-been, Roy Kent, has replaced Ted as the men’s coach; Beard (co-creator Brendan Hunt) stuck around to assist Roy but has gone feral in the absence of his professional soulmate.
  — Judy Berman, Time, 5 Aug. 2026