How to Use to begin with in a Sentence

to begin with

phrase
  • Of course, that only works if your goals were clear to begin with.
    — Dev Patnaik, Forbes.com, 20 July 2026
  • These stocks have weak holders to begin with who don't know how things are working out.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 5 July 2026
  • The Panthers are somewhat light on guard depth to begin with.
    — Mike Kaye, Charlotte Observer, 5 Aug. 2026
  • Of thinking there was any other path but the slippery slope to begin with.
    — Andy Andersen, Vulture, 24 July 2026
  • Or—and here’s a new one—that the election was never legal to begin with.
    — Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, 16 July 2026
  • Michael Pittman is gone from a wide receiver group that wasn’t one of the league’s best to begin with.
    — Darren Cooper, Forbes.com, 22 July 2026
  • There was a certain amount of skepticism baked into the ceasefire to begin with.
    — Harmeet Kaur, CNN Money, 17 July 2026
  • Burnout happened because caring was buried under work that never should have been theirs to begin with.
    — Frantz M. Berthaud, STAT, 7 July 2026
  • The comics share a tendency to begin with the personal and then back into a more complex idea.
    — Hershal Pandya, Vulture, 10 Aug. 2026
  • The Tigers also aren't a major offensive force to begin with.
    — David Troy, FOXNews.com, 21 July 2026
  • The real problem was a scheduling process upstream that ran the machines too hot to begin with.
    — Sanjay Brahmawar, Forbes.com, 23 July 2026
  • Deals failed because the people on either side of the table were never running the same race to begin with.
    — Rick Ford, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2026
  • Generally speaking, there aren’t many teams willing to spend that much money on a player to begin with.
    — Will Sammon, New York Times, 6 July 2026
  • That means the hiring gains are concentrated at firms that were already heavier AI users to begin with.
    — Beatrice Nolan, Fortune, 30 June 2026
  • In other words, shoppers chasing the highest number on the shelf may be chasing a number that was never real to begin with.
    — Peter Su, Forbes.com, 1 July 2026
  • Shoppers end up buying based on information that was never trustworthy to begin with.
    — Arthur Zaczkiewicz, Footwear News, 4 Aug. 2026
  • One of the things that struck me in going through his filmmaking career is a number of his movies weren’t that well received to begin with and then sort of built their status over time.
    — Rick Porter, HollywoodReporter, 17 Aug. 2026
  • So before that reckoning reaches real projects, a chunk of the market is already counting work that was never agentic to begin with.
    — Robert J. Szczerba, Forbes.com, 7 July 2026
  • Running shorts may sound like a trivial item—after all, with inseams ranging from around three to five inches, there’s precious little fabric in them to begin with.
    — Eric Twardzik, Robb Report, 10 Aug. 2026
  • Many people included in these studies may not have been deficient in vitamin D or calcium to begin with.
    — Lindsay Curtis, Verywell Health, 1 July 2026
  • Surely, the Trumpian economic scenario was wildly overoptimistic to begin with.
    — John Cassidy, New Yorker, 13 July 2026
  • The market broke, so Brex went up San Francisco has almost no out-of-home inventory to begin with.
    — Boaz Sobrado, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2026
  • But the options for someone who can’t or doesn’t drink, but just really craves a glass of wine—and isn’t a big cocktail drinker to begin with—are surprisingly still limited.
    — Oset Babür-Winter, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 June 2025
  • There are often fewer international flights to begin with, meaning airlines don’t need to make as many changes to capacity in order to have full flights.
    — Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 30 June 2026
  • Elsewhere in the world, the approach to diagnosis is so different that very often low-grade tumors aren’t found to begin with — let alone diagnosed as cancer.
    — Annalisa Merelli, STAT, 5 Aug. 2026
  • Despite all of this, the main translation is mostly unchanged from the 1995 version, which is fine as that was a great translation to begin with.
    — Ollie Barder, Forbes.com, 29 July 2026
  • Add the cost of tires, consumables, a thirsty engine, and the fact that cars are all so ludicrously expensive to begin with these days, and soon the whole thing starts to look unsustainable.
    — Jonathan M. Gitlin, ArsTechnica, 17 Aug. 2026
  • The percentage gains are likely because there is such a small pool to begin with, and some borrowers are doing cash-out refinances to take advantage of big gains in home equity.
    — Diana Olick, CNBC, 15 July 2026
  • The Trevor Project isn’t active, but only because the administration canceled the services to begin with.
    — Theresa Gaffney, STAT, 29 June 2026
  • In the Pretti case, what happened is that federal officials just blocked state and local officials from accessing the evidence and the scene to begin with.
    — Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, 9 July 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'to begin with.' 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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