Anna Karenina
Americannoun
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Anna Karenina begins with the famous sentence “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
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.
Most enterprises fail — the so-called Anna Karenina principle.
From MarketWatch • May 13, 2026
"We're not talking about Playboy magazine, you know, we're talking about Anna Karenina and War and Peace," Ms Hayes said.
From BBC • Aug. 31, 2024
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” opens Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina.
From Scientific American • Nov. 2, 2023
Anna Karenina April 5 to 9 at the Kennedy Center.
From Washington Post • Apr. 1, 2023
To which conditions was Francis Galton referring, when he spoke of those other species as “destined to perpetual wildness”? The answer follows from the Anna Karenina principle.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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.
