adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
debate
▪
Roy Hattersley's simultaneous resignation as deputy leader also opens up the increasingly sterile debate on constitutional reform.
▪
This threatens to become a sterile debate , but there are ways to make progress.
▪
Legal theory has long been bedevilled by a sterile debate between positivists and natural lawyers.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
a sterile laboratory
▪
a sterile , meaningless relationship
▪
a group of sterile skyscrapers
▪
Giving blood is perfectly safe. All equipment is sterile , used once and thrown away.
▪
Red Cross officials say they are running short of disinfectant and sterile bandages.
▪
Some women who used the birth control device became sterile .
▪
Susan thought that her illness had made her sterile .
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
During the sterile Eighties, we overdosed on design and killed freedom of expression.
▪
In a sterile world casein would be nearly an ideal glue.
▪
It lost to a politicized plan, which resulted in the sterile towers and hidden plazas that now mark Bunker Hill.
▪
The floors of old-growth forests tend to be fairly sterile because overhead canopies of leaves prevent light from reaching the ground.
▪
There are even sterile controls for the piped music.
▪
They are native to dry and sterile regions.
▪
This does not, however, render the question of social origins of state personnel, such as bureaucrats, sterile .