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.

That visit to the stately home, which makes Elizabeth wince about her brusque rejection of Darcy's proposal, was omitted from the 1940 film, to clear Greer Garson of any suspicion of mercenariness.

From The Guardian • Aug. 20, 2011

Her self-confessed mercenariness was always brought out in a whimsical, half-jocular way that seemed to have nothing of worldly hardness in it.

From The Best Policy by Flower, Elliott

Oh, weariness of man's spirit before that unresting mercenariness in high places, which neither, when his race clamored for justice, nor when it languished for pity, would listen without hire!

From Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 1 by De Quincey, Thomas

I submit that such a free choice is far more likely to produce a secular increase in the beauty, the intellectual and physical activity and the capacity of the race, than our present haphazard mercenariness.

From New Worlds For Old A Plain Account of Modern Socialism by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)

To send him any thing in return would be to reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what I know he meant a freewill offering.

From The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5 The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820 by Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)