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.

The musical-theater singers excelled in theatricality and diction, but I missed some of the lushness that we expect from opera performances.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 17, 2026

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

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

Clean, polite, nice voice, good diction, a pretty decent-looking fellow, with a very disarming smile—and in the beginning he smiled quite a lot.

From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote