Luckily, there's no doubt about what virility is, since it's depicted on the covers of dozens of new romance novels every month! A masterful and dominating manner, a splendid bared chest, a full head of lustrous hair, and an array of stunning costumes seem to be what's required. (Virile traits often missing in these men are hair on the chest and any hint of future baldness.) High-school football provides a showplace for demonstrations of adolescent virility, and for years afterward virile high-school players can keep using football language in their business life: "get to the red zone", "Hail Mary pass", "move the ball", and on and on.
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
For someone like Eli, then, projecting movie-star-like virility and vigor was an exercise in social advancement, in distancing himself from his babushka forebears’ grim reality.—David Kamp, New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2025 Beards were not signs of virility but of disorder.—Maurizio Valsania, The Conversation, 2 Oct. 2025 Mao Zedong is said to have suggested that anyone who couldn’t tolerate chiles couldn’t be a revolutionary; all over the world, and for centuries, spiciness has been something to conquer, and chiles have symbolized strength, bravery, national pride, and virility.—Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic, 18 Aug. 2025 Beards emerged as legible emblems of male virility and authority just as women began demanding the vote.—Book Marks
august 1, Literary Hub, 1 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for virility
Share