How to Use rhetorical in a Sentence

rhetorical

adjective

• My question was rhetorical. I wasn't really expecting an answer.
• The two are neck and neck in a race to the rhetorical middle.
  — Faith Bottum, WSJ, 26 Sep. 2022
• Some on the right saw right through the rhetorical trick.
  — Brian Stelter, CNN, 25 Mar. 2025
• Downes asks at one point, and the question is meant to be rhetorical.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 13 Oct. 2023
• For the most part, Mr. Trump’s blasts at the news media have been rhetorical.
  — Peter Baker and Sydney Ember, New York Times, 11 Dec. 2017
• For a while the threat to the survival of the agreement looked more rhetorical than real.
  — The Economist, 28 Mar. 2018
• Many of us are getting stuck in the same rhetorical cul-de-sacs.
  — W. Kamau Bell, CNN, 2 May 2021
• Dougherty has become a star of the strike for her blunt rhetorical style.
  — Gene Maddaus, Variety, 27 May 2023
• Some of those threats were intended to be rhetorical, at least in the short run.
  — Washington Post, 13 June 2019
• Trump has declared rhetorical war on the NFL over the issue.
  — Z. Byron Wolf, CNN, 8 June 2018
• In Wolfish, the question is dropped like a generic, rhetorical call to action, and then Berry moves on.
  — Colin Dickey, The New Republic, 31 Mar. 2023
• The best part about it, though, is that the complaints are required to be rhetorical, Curvey says.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 9 June 2021
• For now, at least, Locsin doesn’t feel obliged to hold his rhetorical fire.
  — Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner, 3 May 2021
• To argue on this rhetorical ground is to disable the argument from the start.
  — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 11 July 2023
• Both sides have dug in, and both have turned to lessons of the 1994 ban for rhetorical ammunition.
  — Kevin Diaz, San Antonio Express-News, 25 Feb. 2018
• To answer the rhetorical question, the answer is no, no there isn't.
  — Shelby Stewart, Houston Chronicle, 4 Aug. 2020
• As Mueller spoke, politicos and others sought the rhetorical upper hand on what to make of it all.
  — Ronald J. Hansen, azcentral, 24 July 2019
• Schaake’s speech was a hairpin turn in rhetorical space.
  — Nick Romeo, The New Yorker, 18 Aug. 2020
• There is more than a kernel of truth in this rhetorical excess.
  — Tom Simonite, WIRED, 10 June 2019
• All of which means that, in the clash of rhetorical language and the technical kind, the rhetoric may turn out to be more important.
  — The Economist, 12 Dec. 2019
• But what about Netanyahu, a man in thrall to the hard right and not exactly known for rhetorical restraint?
  — Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic, 21 Jan. 2024
• Apples in a barrel for the Dems, the lie that Vance and Trump have been spinning quickly got lost in the rhetorical shuffle.
  — Ted Johnson, Deadline, 1 Oct. 2024
• In Bannon’s rhetorical paradigm, the struggle for the soul of the GOP boils down to good versus evil.
  — Olivia Nuzzi, Daily Intelligencer, 26 Oct. 2017
• For many, the question of whether screening Rust was even a good idea stands purely rhetorical.
  — Nick Newman, Vulture, 20 Nov. 2024
• Maybe rhetorical war is just as worthless as the real deal.
  — Drew Magary, GQ, 23 May 2018
• Then Freud makes one of the sly rhetorical turns by which his work is marked and that give it its special potency.
  — Janet Malcolm, The New York Review of Books, 24 Mar. 2020
• The rhetorical bundle of arguments that the system is corrupt can be captured by both the left and the right.
  — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2024
• Lloyd knew the answer to that rhetorical question, but there was more on Lloyd’s mind than money.
  — Josh Newman, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 Dec. 2021
• In the early days of the Trump Administration, Kirk’s case was pursued in a rhetorical climate of law and order in which wrongdoers would be held accountable.
  — Mike Fox, Oc Register, 12 May 2025
• The race comes as the Trump administration has punished big law firms because of their partners and clients, lobbed rhetorical attacks against judges, and fired career lawyers at federal agencies.
  — Carrie Johnson, NPR, 12 May 2025