How to Use lights-out in a Sentence
lights-out
noun-
No wake-up bell or lights-out hour.
—Lydia Mansel, Southern Living, 28 May 2026
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Our defense has been playing lights-out all season.
—Jerry McDonald, Mercury News, 4 Jan. 2026
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The days when the offense looks the most anemic are the same days when the pitching is lights-out.
—Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News, 28 May 2024
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The team is stacked with solid shooters, but nobody is lights-out this season.
—Jared Weiss, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2026
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For Gay, leaving the church wasn’t a simple lights-out moment.
—H. Alan Scott, MSNBC Newsweek, 26 Nov. 2025
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The sketch wasn’t lights-out amazing, but the switcheroo was interesting.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 15 Sep. 2025
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Thompson’s lights-out performance wasn’t even the highlight of his night.
—Lamond Pope, Chicago Tribune, 21 June 2024
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The Gators were lights-out in the second half against the Terrapins.
—Chris Branch, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
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Sam Hauser joined Brown in the spotlight with his lights-out shooting.
—Greg Dudek, Boston Herald, 18 Jan. 2026
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Florida came out shooting lights-out from the beginning of the game.
—Edward Lee, Baltimore Sun, 16 May 2024
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By the time lights-out finally comes, the exhausted patient conks out hard.
—Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
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The Tigers have been lights-out defensively just about every week.
—Tyler Everett, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Oct. 2025
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Sexton has developed into a lights-out shooter and works hard on defense.
—Sam Vecenie, New York Times, 26 June 2025
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With a big helping hand from Shohei Ohtani and a lights-out bullpen, that’s exactly what the Dodgers did.
—Houston Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, 26 Sep. 2024
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Halladay was lights-out the rest of the way, allowing only four more hits in finishing eight innings.
—Tim Britton, New York Times, 30 May 2025
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The Phillies had a strong rotation, a lights-out closer, and a lineup that had a good balance of power and on-base threat.
—Nelson Espinal, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Dec. 2025
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After some miscues earlier in the game, Jackson was lights-out on the Ravens’ final drive.
—Kevin Dotson, CNN, 19 Jan. 2025
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Jones is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none by NBA standards who will need to be a lights-out shooter to stick.
—Sam Vecenie, New York Times, 26 June 2026
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Just some consistent Dodgers offense, coupled with more dominance from a lights-out pitching staff.
—Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2024
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Kat’s goal was to keep me awake but unstimulated, so that when lights-out finally came, I’d be primed for deep, solid sleep.
—Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
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And the second unit has enjoyed lights-out stretches from Landry Shamet and Miles McBride.
—Esfandiar Baraheni, New York Times, 3 June 2026
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Does that make Suárez, who had another great season this year and has always been lights-out in the playoffs, the most expendable of the three?
—Jackson Roberts, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Dec. 2025
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The Thunder have been lights-out from a drafting and player-development standpoint in recent years.
—Bryan Toporek, Forbes.com, 11 July 2025
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For someone with sleep-onset insomnia, Kat says, lights-out might have come earlier, and the scheme would have been different.
—Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
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Quieter thoughts, less resistance at lights-out and the kind of rest that actually makes tomorrow easier.
—Allison Palmer, Charlotte Observer, 23 Apr. 2026
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The most exciting part of the Singapore Grand Prix was the start—that lights-out moment when anything can happen.
—Rob Reed, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2024
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In the coming years voters will have to grapple with those changes and determine new benchmarks, both for the lights-out aces whose arms couldn’t hold up and the steady workhorses who rarely missed a start.
—Mac Cerullo, Boston Herald, 25 Jan. 2026
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The Celtics responded with a lights-out three-point performance in Game 5, but the Knicks ended the series in six.
—Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 9 Mar. 2026
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English goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was playing lights-out against the barrage.
—Miami Herald, 16 July 2026
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The other new contender is the Colts’ Taylor, who just had one of those lights-out, history-defining kind of games on Sunday.
—Hannah Vanbiber, New York Times, 28 Oct. 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lights-out.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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