How to Use literalism in a Sentence

literalism

noun

• Schoenbrun is not going for kicky mimicry here — literalism is not their chief aim.
  — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 13 May 2026
• The record marks the point where the singer’s disco purism tips over into outright literalism.
  — Harry Tafoya, Pitchfork, 20 Apr. 2026
• But, in its literalism, the essay struggles to transcend the form.
  — Anna Wiener, New Yorker, 9 Apr. 2025
• This is the first one post-Barbie, which has ushered in a new wave of literalism on the red carpet.
  — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 6 May 2024
• Dystopian literalism bleeds into all the proceedings here, moving like a wheel within a wheel.
  — Rob Weinert-Kendt, Vulture, 20 Oct. 2022
• Yet even when the pain of censorship and social death surfaces with such violent literalism, nothing comes of it.
  — Merve Emre, The New York Review of Books, 6 June 2019
• In fact, the allegory travels more easily once it is freed from literalism.
  — Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 13 Apr. 2026
• This literalism extends across the entire picture.
  — Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire, 5 Sep. 2025
• Lyrically, country music is all about literalism, something that’s rarely been Tweedy’s strong suit.
  — Jon Dolan, Rolling Stone, 27 May 2022
• This isn’t the kind of puzzle thriller in which all the elements click into place with a thudding literalism that compliments an attentive eye.
  — Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 2025
• Barrett has condemned as a canard the widespread view that textualism is literalism.
  — Ed Whelan, National Review, 1 Oct. 2020
• The very setup suggests a screenwriter whose sense of psychology is defined with arid literalism by his own just-so, cut-to-fit contrivances.
  — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2026
• Hansen-Løve is little concerned by literalism, either in the movie’s form or in her characters’ dialogue.
  — Annie Geng, The New Republic, 25 Oct. 2021
• Together, the films also prove that literalism isn’t always required in stories that impart messy truths about humanity.
  — Esther Zuckerman, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2024
• As Colbert showed, Old Testament literalism makes for a nice belief system.
  — Jack Holmes, Esquire, 28 Sep. 2017
• Even in productions that aspire to greater subtlety, a grinding literalism threatens—a dutiful hitting of marks.
  — Molly Fischer, The New Yorker, 13 June 2022
• But that literalism, the Court instructed, was not a clear authorization for the agency to regulate those wetlands.
  — Daniel Wallach, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
• Religious literalism substitutes certainty for mystery; so does a sudden rupture with the past.
  — Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2021
• Yet despite its reliance upon metaphor and genre, it feels predicated upon a kind of moral literalism — or perhaps simply obviousness.
  — New York Times, 20 May 2021
• His cooking today forgoes some of its former literalism (those papas a la huancaina are gone) and instead centers on Peruvian cuisine’s core tenets.
  — Patric Kuh, Los Angeles Magazine, 29 Sep. 2017
• Its musings on the spiritual — or even on the innocent, the naïve, the youthful — begin and end in the realm of documentarian literalism.
  — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 18 Feb. 2025
• At that point, the allusions Aster has so tantalizingly built up disintegrate into graphic gore and on-the-nose literalism.
  — Ann Hornaday, kansascity, 7 June 2018
• For decades the insistence on the truth value of rap lyrics was of paramount importance; now, that has run headlong into the literalism of law enforcement interpretation.
  — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 24 Dec. 2024
• Audrey Hobert snuck up on pop this year and broke the curse of Swiftian literalism it’s been under with an album that, at first glance, seems like the quintessential document of that trend.
  — Pitchfork, 4 Dec. 2025
• Eschewing dull literalism, the bold illustrations lend imaginative flair to the warm, lived-in look of Pye’s production design.
  — David Benedict, Variety, 30 Nov. 2025
• Or are the critics making that argument engaged in an absurd form of literalism, refusing to recognize ironic discourse even though it’s been repeatedly pointed out to them?
  — Ezra Klein, Vox, 8 Aug. 2018
• But as there is a push for greater casting freedoms in some areas, there is an argument for more literalism in others, especially from actors with certain backgrounds who lack opportunities.
  — New York Times, 28 July 2022
• Even for an artist like Kinsella who’s never been shy about autobiographical literalism in his music, some of the revelations felt shocking.
  — Sam Sodomsky, Pitchfork, 4 May 2026
• Given the dangers of biblical literalism, Christians should stop taking every word of Holy Writ literally.
  — The Salt Lake Tribune, 19 July 2022
• Some of them may be well known to Israeli viewers, but even so, the effect — and perhaps the intention — is to disorient the audience and strip away the literalism of historical dramatizations.
  — A. O. Scott, New York Times, 28 Jan. 2016