as in shrill
marked by or producing a harsh combination of sounds
a dissonant chorus of noises arose from the busy construction site
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Recent Examples of dissonant
As someone who built her career by upending traditional dynamics and giving women more control over their interactions online, having no say in how her own story is told feels dissonant.
—
Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 20 Sep. 2025
Better-than-forecast retail sales for August out Tuesday contributed a sturdy reading to a dissonant set of macroeconomic signals.
—Michael Santoli, CNBC, 16 Sep. 2025
His new film, Highest 2 Lowest, which opened Friday, flips Akira Kurosawa’s mannered 1963 staple, High and Low, into a rowdy, topical, laugh-out-loud romp (starring Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, and A$AP Rocky) that’s as beautifully jarring as a dissonant sax solo.
—Will Dukes, Rolling Stone, 17 Aug. 2025
Still, the moody, dissonant synths were transfixing.
—Hazlitt, 30 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for dissonant
Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 20 Sep. 2025
Better-than-forecast retail sales for August out Tuesday contributed a sturdy reading to a dissonant set of macroeconomic signals.
—Michael Santoli, CNBC, 16 Sep. 2025
His new film, Highest 2 Lowest, which opened Friday, flips Akira Kurosawa’s mannered 1963 staple, High and Low, into a rowdy, topical, laugh-out-loud romp (starring Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, and A$AP Rocky) that’s as beautifully jarring as a dissonant sax solo.
—Will Dukes, Rolling Stone, 17 Aug. 2025
Still, the moody, dissonant synths were transfixing.
—Hazlitt, 30 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for dissonant
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dissonant
Adjective
-
Arriving in January, the California Post will be Murdoch’s transplant of his right-leaning tabloid the New York Post, replete with shrill headlines and randy gossip.—
Peter Bart,
Deadline,
11 Sep. 2025
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One option is to simply double down on the existing approach and become shriller.—
Robert G. Eccles,
Forbes.com,
11 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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Weber installed bars in multiple disparate locations, and although the bars themselves did display signs of significant amounts of noise, Weber looked for correlations in these noisy signals between bars in different locations.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
7 Nov. 2025
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With fewer people having children, empathy toward parents—and patience for noisy, curious kids—has waned.—
Daniella Gray,
MSNBC Newsweek,
4 Nov. 2025
Adjective
-
Fried and the cacophonous home crowd in his proverbial corner, were a lethal combination for the Yankees in the first six innings.—
Gabrielle Starr,
Boston Herald,
1 Oct. 2025
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Bowling at run-hungry batters on largely unforgiving pitches in vast, cacophonous stadiums with huge outfields in front of a partisan and at times baying crowd — plenty of English bowlers have found bowling in Australia akin to a Sisyphean task.—
James Wallace,
New York Times,
22 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Its natural deodorizing properties help neutralize the unpleasant smells associated with pets, according to Stein.—
Daley Quinn,
Southern Living,
1 Nov. 2025
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The 75-year-old ginkgo trees have been wafting the unpleasant smell into the air at the Northern California park, forcing residents to brave the stench that is comparable to vomit, The Sacramento Bee and SFGATE report.—
Natalia Senanayake,
PEOPLE,
30 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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The film has a way of connecting discordant wavelengths — past and future, memory and experience, reality and fiction — that's as existentially haunting as anything in recent genre history.—
Dennis Perkins,
Entertainment Weekly,
31 Oct. 2025
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What happened to me was a discordant event in my life.—
Brittany Spanos,
Rolling Stone,
31 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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The metallic red and green hues deliver that classic Christmas feel, while the rose gold and gold tones add a bit of sparkle to your daily hydration, and can only be found at Target.—
Jacqueline Tempera,
PEOPLE,
11 Nov. 2025
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Glassware without a microwave-safe label should not be used, including non-tempered glass, antique or fragile glassware, or glass with metallic trims or decorations.—
Katie Rosenhouse,
Southern Living,
9 Nov. 2025
Adjective
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Those songs remind Omara of real people and real events, political interludes whose senselessness and brutality have left unmusical lacunae in her life.—
Vinson Cunningham,
The New Yorker,
18 Dec. 2023
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His parents were unmusical Russian-Jewish immigrants who ran various businesses with mixed success.—
The Economist,
The Economist,
3 Oct. 2019
Adjective
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Setting Discordant Personal Goals A 2023 study published in Current Psychology finds that partners’ inharmonious goals can have detrimental effects on relationships.—
Mark Travers,
Forbes,
29 Mar. 2024
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For sixteen hours a week, Valentine hopes to share some melody in a place that, for some, can feel inharmonious.—
Washington Post,
Washington Post,
24 July 2021
Cite this Entry
“Dissonant.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dissonant. Accessed 18 Nov. 2025.
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