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.

You could be watching a 1930s movie as Steven Carpenter sanctimoniously plays the highhanded lawyer Joseph Tooker, crusading to protect a hapless public from being swindled.

From Washington Post • Oct. 5, 2018

Rather than redirecting power, as protest art feels it must do, Linyekula simply soaks it up, bravely, at times violently, and you fear possibly fatally, but never sanctimoniously.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 29, 2017

The next day he would be sanctimoniously removed from office and forced to provide a ritualized apology that meant nothing.

From Salon • Aug. 13, 2015

It’s these ideas—rather than his extraordinarily insightful remarks about particular compositions—that unite Hawke and Bernstein, and this is where Hawke’s approach to his film seems to conform itself sanctimoniously to Bernstein’s thinking.

From The New Yorker • Mar. 14, 2015

Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson, &c., the Gérontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously contemplated their bombarded electors, and, fully aware of the facile forgetfulness of Paris, dreamt of their future re-election.

From History of the Commune of 1871 by Lissagary, P.