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.

We now understand, more clearly than in the 1950s, that the consequences of human action on a global scale are rather like Godzilla: huge, unknowable, motiveless and not easily stopped.

From Scientific American • Nov. 3, 2023

Mr Blunt said: "This appears to be a completely motiveless, random, senseless, inexplicable incident."

From BBC • May 16, 2022

A conscious re-examination of the motiveless malice that leads Iago to destroy Othello and Desdemona, “Billy Budd” will probably stand as the last tragedy in English.

From New York Times • Oct. 22, 2020

Some resistance was more overtly political; the critic Elaine Showalter, on Twitter, decried a plotline of the “saintly academic hero tormented by motiveless malignity of his despicable wife and other monsters.”

From The New Yorker • Mar. 11, 2019

Iago's soliloquy, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!

From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by Bartlett, John