1
as in moralizing
marked by or given to preaching moral values
a sententious crank who has written countless letters to the editor about the decline in family values
Synonyms & Similar Words
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2
as in concise
marked by the use of few words to convey much information or meaning
memoirs that are filled with sententious observations on love, marriage, and happiness
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of sententious
This conclusion will shock anyone who knows Twain only through his writing, in which the author is wise and witty and, above all, devastating in his portrayal of frauds, cretins, and sententious bores.
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Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 9 May 2025
Audiences have no choice but to exist in the theatrical moment, without recourse to linear logic, sententious language or psychological epiphanies.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2025
This is a bracing, even novel, perspective on a war whose film depictions so often traffic in sententious Greatest Generation platitudes.
—Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 25 Oct. 2024
Without the wit inherent in an epigram, a sententious formulation becomes a mere adage, aphorism, apothegm, gnome, maxim, or saw.
—Bryan A. Garner, National Review, 15 Sep. 2022
Instead each event—from lethal accidents to vicious murders to Category 5 hurricanes—is immediately sorted into its prelabeled moral narrative file, each one full of similarly useful sententious parables.
—Gerard Baker, WSJ, 30 May 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for sententious
Adjective
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The company is also upgrading a proofreading option for checking grammar and making messages more concise.—
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Just across the street, Miya is a quirky, two-room Thai charmer with a relatively concise menu of curries, noodles, soups, salads and vegetables.—
Adjective
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After a brief interlude outside for community members to reconnect, the pews filled up again.—
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The trailer shows Damon as Odysseus and brief glimpses at his life during the Trojan War (including the iconic Trojan Horse) and his years-long journey back to his homeland.—
Adjective
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Political without being didactic, the film taps into contemporary anxieties around immigration, power and resistance, delivering tension, spectacle and emotional weight in equal measure.—
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Marlin notes that children avoid more didactic books and prefer absorbing narratives.—
Adjective
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Such rights obviously do not include summary execution at sea.—
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Not surprisingly, given the risk of summary execution, many had initial doubts.—
Adjective
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History shows that muses are not anomalies, and their stories are instructive for us now.—
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The series finds an instructive case in one particular pastor, whose trajectory as a neo-Nazi skinhead turned vehement anti-racist makes for a compelling tale.—
Adjective
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To rebuild a consensus, politicians must thus appeal to these swing voters by eschewing moralistic and globalist rhetoric.—
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The sanitized relationships and moralistic comeuppances that characterize classic-Hollywood movies falsified private life in their own time and enduringly distort the past; a tale such as Crawford’s should dispel nostalgia for bygone days and the myth of their orderly decorum.—
Cite this Entry
“Sententious.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sententious. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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