sententious

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Audiences have no choice but to exist in the theatrical moment, without recourse to linear logic, sententious language or psychological epiphanies.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 16, 2025

Yet “sandblasted” is not a satire of Oprah or Oprah-ism; especially as played by the former newscaster and talk show host Rolonda Watts, Adah is at least as warm as she is sententious.

From New York Times • Feb. 27, 2022

There’s a similar try-hard-ness about “The Power of Prayer,” another song about the spiritual significance of music that I find more sententious than moving.

From Slate • Oct. 22, 2020

Bening’s performance is a different story altogether—she virtually makes the movie, sending even simple lines from its often sententious script deftly spinning and leaping in surprising flourishes.

From The New Yorker • Jan. 24, 2017

But in the Tale of Melibœus his inimitable faculty of story-telling comes to his aid, and determines his sentences to a little more variety and picturesqueness, though the sententious still predominates.

From The English Novel And the Principle of its Development by Lanier, Sidney