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.

A complex, funny, plangently sorrowful Pygmalion story is enacted between two people who are connected but also held apart by their separate histories of oppression.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 18, 2026

“His tone is sometimes plangently lyrical, sometimes sarcastically sharp,” Woolfe wrote.

From New York Times • May 24, 2022

I've never wanted to escape myself—never nodded along with the refrain "I'm too much with myself / I wanna be someone else" from Evan Dando's plangently beautiful Lemonheads song "My Drug Buddy."

From Salon • Nov. 28, 2021

The American landscape, however, was no longer made up of trees and cows lowing plangently at dusk.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 22, 2020

For the bells did the work of arousing curiosity; they tolled plangently into the night.

From South Wind by Douglas, Norman