Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The New Abnormal” had a handful of compact songs that channeled the band’s ultra-cool early influences—think arty garage-rock like the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Television—but “Reality Awaits” leans into experimentation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
The maze of shadowy streets around the New York Stock Exchange has been rarely associated with elegant, arty escapes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 2026
It featured the same jackets-off, casual image, but there was also a designer chic, with an arty black-and-white picture that wouldn't have looked out of place in an upmarket jeans advert.
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2024
They were exotic — not merely English, but thanks to the influence of their arty German friends Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann, they were continental.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2024
A prep school kid, a touch arty, wearing an old man’s suit and no doubt reading Camus or Kerouac.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Pennebaker’s cinéma vérité record of Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, as he transitions from Great Folk Hope to Arty Enfant Terrible.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2024
Arty must save his grandmother from the darkness and bring light back to her house.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2023
Several months into the renovation, Arty created a Facebook group to keep family and friends updated.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 2, 2021
“For a lot of Black people, we don’t want old homes, because we don’t want the history that comes with them,” says Jamie Arty, a Long Island homeowner.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 20, 2021
Arty played through it as Martha Plimpton’s character, Stef, while I played as Mikey, Sean Astin’s character.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Arty. and two men will proceed without delay to the cities of Philadelphia and New York, for the purpose of arresting certain persons engaged in manufacturing forged Discharge papers.
From Between the Lines Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Smith, Henry Bascom
Arty., will proceed to Washington with Mrs. Mary E. Sawyer, Rebel mail carrier, turn her over to Supt. of Old Capitol Prison, taking receipt for prisoner.
From Between the Lines Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Smith, Henry Bascom
Arty. and Commanding Detectives, Middle Department, 8th Army Corps, with one man, Lucius Babcock, of his force, will proceed to New York City, on special government business.
From Between the Lines Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Smith, Henry Bascom
Arty., who was sent with a squad of men on the 22d ult. to make certain seizures.
From Between the Lines Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Smith, Henry Bascom
Structurally and tonally, it’s a far cry from the crowd-pleasing American blockbusters of the 1980s, yet it is a box-office success and reflects that audiences were ready for artier movies as mainstream entertainment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 8, 2026
Gregory, however, says he understood Dickinson’s artier touches on a personal level.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2025
She says the success of artier efforts such as Hereditary, from studio A24, and crowd pleasers from horror specialists Blumhouse.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2025
Oldenburg’s first blaze of publicity came in the early ’60s, when a type of performance art called the Happening began to crop up in the artier precincts of Manhattan.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 18, 2022
The Oscars are supposed to forestall that sort of thing: They lend buzz to the smaller, artier films that desperately need it.
From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2022
Describing the "dirt in the face" burial scene as the most challenging part of the shoot, Stone added: "Was it the artiest thing I’ve done? I guess so."
From Reuters ● May 5, 2022
Put one onstage and the artiest notions immediately dissolve into Instagram moments.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2022
It was with Sutcliffe, the artiest Beatle, that Kirchherr connected most deeply: the two soon became lovers and moved into a loft space in her mother’s house.
From The Guardian ● May 19, 2020
It was a double whammy unprecedented even for the artiest of art-pop groups.
From Economist ● Jul. 5, 2018
In the artiest touch, English lyrics tumble across the screen as Vargas sings of loss, loneliness and solitude.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 26, 2017
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
