diction

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.

Not helping matters were the show’s taped introductions to the segments—breathy readings, delivered with mushy diction, of incomprehensible poems by Monty Richthofen.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 20, 2026

With the program and song texts only available to download on the cellphone, the audience was left in the dark without texts and, with amplification obscuring diction, not knowing what’s what.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 19, 2026

Wilson Follett, the author of “Modern American Usage,” complained about its “extreme tolerance of crude neologisms and of shabby diction generally.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 14, 2025

Reviewer David Kipen celebrated Wallace’s “stupendously high-toned vocabulary and gleeful low-comedy diction, coupled with a sense of syntax so elongated that he can seem to go for days without surfacing.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 14, 2025

A “tall courtly black man with Shakespearean diction and the stare of an eagle,” Asa Philip Randolph, close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, headed the 35,000-strong Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly