How to Use world-building in a Sentence
world-building
noun-
If the first film felt like endless world-building and set-up, have no fear.
—Scott Phillips, Forbes, 4 Jan. 2025
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The vivid world-building lends real heft to the love stories.
—Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 8 Aug. 2025
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And that’s world-building/defining.
—Literary Hub, 27 Jan. 2026
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This theme park is also home to live shows and a great deal of careful world-building.
—Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 17 June 2025
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Or sometimes, allowing both to be true can be a form of world-building.
—Literary Hub, 27 Jan. 2026
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That kind of world-building appealed to him more than the story of this kid who becomes a god.
—WIRED, 19 Sep. 2023
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The gold digger motif also spiced up her world-building.
—Gail Mitchell, Billboard, 25 Nov. 2025
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Walker’s world-building around the opaque adult Jane, though, is less assured.
—Leah Greenblatt, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2025
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Burton, long revered for his quirky world-building genius, needs to get his macabre back, bigtime.
—Karen D'souza, The Mercury News, 25 Sep. 2024
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Each outfit in this sense serves as a memory and a call toward the work of world-building.
—Najha Zigbi-Johnson, Essence, 30 Apr. 2025
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What does work in this film are the performances and some elements of its world-building.
—Lovia Gyarkye, HollywoodReporter, 23 May 2025
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More than just digital wayfinding aids, maps are strategic tools of world-building.
—Patty Heyda, The Conversation, 1 June 2026
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As a science fiction writer, Scott went straight to world-building.
—Scott Westerfeld, PEOPLE, 19 July 2026
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Charli’s praise of world-building echoes the way that marketers and influencers talk.
—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 24 Feb. 2026
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The 40-year-old was also inspired by Dior’s world-building skills.
—Joelle Diderich, Footwear News, 27 June 2025
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The alt-pop of the past fifteen years has delighted in over-the-top personae and world-building.
—Mitch Therieau, New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2026
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The result of their joint artistic labor amounts to idiosyncratic world-building with a retro sheen.
—Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 31 Jan. 2025
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How does your approach to world-building in music differ from comedy?
—Nate Jackson, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2024
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The duo has a long-term, world-building plan for DC across movies and TV series.
—Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 12 Sep. 2025
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How this all will ultimately lead to world-building applications is hazy—and that’s part of the point.
—Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 3 July 2025
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Your world-building feels deceptively deep.
—MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Mar. 2026
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Clunky but effective world-building follows.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 12 Aug. 2025
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The elaborate world-building and precinct plot yielded a timeless film that would be studied and enjoyed for decades to come.
—Jordan Runtagh, Peoplemag, 31 Mar. 2024
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Readers get all the best parts of swoony love story tropes, magical world-building and high-stakes adventure.
—Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY, 14 Dec. 2024
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Its cross-cultural world-building—etched, with shabbily retro flair, in boxy frames of grainy 16-mm.
—Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2025
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As far as fake stories go, this one had some admittedly impressive world-building.
—Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 17 Mar. 2026
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Elsewhere in the interview, Elliott discussed some of the plans for world-building in this next film.
—Charlotte Phillipp, Peoplemag, 22 Apr. 2024
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People certainly aren’t looking for the next Game of Thrones or the next world-building show.
—Lacey Rose, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 Nov. 2023
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Nothing else gets accomplished at the opera other than some wonderful world-building.
—Alice Burton, Vulture, 30 Mar. 2026
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The Rhode campaigns have become an exercise in world-building for Bieber.
—Hikmat Mohammed, Footwear News, 9 June 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'world-building.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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