metanarrative
Britishnoun
Etymology
Origin of metanarrative
C20: from meta- + narrative
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.
The effect of the metanarrative is to juxtapose Byron’s violent passions with the careful, repressed behavior of one who hoped to capture him in literature.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 26, 2025
But what about Dua Lipa, who has loads of hits but maybe no metanarrative?
From New York Times • Mar. 13, 2024
Characters could die in one episode and be fine in the next, all connected via a multiverse metanarrative as ambitious as anything attempted by Marvel or Rick and Morty.
From The Verge • Nov. 16, 2021
No longer a narrative, it would recede into what literary theorists call metanarrative, succeeding those—like religious truth or faith in progress—that have governed the culture of earlier eras.
From Slate • Feb. 19, 2019
So they create this metanarrative in their head and everything that is consistent with that metanarrative, they wind up believing.
From Salon • Apr. 19, 2016
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.
