phrasal

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.

Repetition has an indelible place in Black expressive culture: in the syncopated rhythms of jazz, the phrasal repetitions of the blues and the guttural moans of soul made meaningful by dint of remarkable vocal performances.

From New York Times • Mar. 4, 2021

Kafka’s work includes plenty of the hurdles to machine reading recently cataloged by a group of Indian computer scientists, including “complex phrasal structures” and the fact that words can have different meanings in different contexts.

From Slate • Apr. 19, 2018

Cline loves phrasal fragments: “The dark maritime cypress packed tight outside the window, the twitch of salt air.”

From The New Yorker • May 30, 2016

If anything, its fractured lines and phrasal salad are a sign that something’s suspiciously wrong and the message should be discarded.

From Scientific American • Jun. 19, 2013

But these patterns alone are by no means sufficient to explain or register all the phrasal movements of English prose—as a single sentence will show.

From The Principles of English Versification by Baum, Paull Franklin