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.

While Polley’s film — co-written with Toews — doesn’t always ascend to similar heights, once the viewer accepts its mannered style and bluntly literalistic vernacular, it builds to a kind of unadorned grandeur.

From Washington Post • Jan. 4, 2023

At minimum, it’s suffocatingly literalistic to argue that Tolkien’s themes can’t survive casting a Black actress as a dwarf princess.

From New York Times • Sep. 29, 2022

“We have a more literalistic approach that affects the way we negotiate and look at the text,” he said.

From New York Times • Jun. 23, 2015

That the literalistic critiques of historians and witnesses can co-exist — fractiously, but ultimately usefully — with the kind of inspiration, beauty and transformative power that the very best cinema such as “Selma” can provide.

From Washington Post • Jan. 2, 2015

As Martin J. S. Rudwick puts it, "No geologist of any nationality whose work was taken seriously by other geologists advocated a timescale confined within the limits of a literalistic exegesis of Genesis."

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson