fictive

Example Sentences

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.
Recent Examples of fictive The history bestows legitimacy, which is destabilized because so much of the history is fictive. Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025 Populism ignores very real and differentiated social problems and cuts across them with a fictive target, a target that simultaneously satisfies all, and none, of these problems. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Newsweek, 4 Feb. 2025 The curator, Reid Byers, presents 100 books — unfinished, fictive (books existing in other novels and dramas) and lost — painstakingly created and recreated. New York Times, 25 Jan. 2025 So being connected, even this fictive version of reading the New York Times every day, that was part of that. Jason Simon, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2024 See All Example Sentences for fictive
Recent Examples of Synonyms for fictive
Adjective
  • Registration requirements today are largely illusory, with huge swaths of the non-citizen population exempt from registration and carry requirements.
    Robert Alexander, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Oct. 2025
  • But even if that purported lunar companion proves illusory, this new method of tracking down mysterious sources of unexplained material around giant exoplanets could become a definitive pathway for future exomoon finds.
    Nola Taylor Tillman, Scientific American, 13 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Parker Finn's directorial debut not only lives up to the hype but also delivers a campy and absurd exploration of the transference of generational trauma — pulling off some impressive jump scares and one hell of a phantasmagorical ending.
    Steven Thrash, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Oct. 2025
  • The new film tries to connect its phantasmagorical elements to regular middle-class lives, but the attempt serves both aspects poorly.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Sam Levinson’s hallucinatory high school drama Euphoria was renewed for a third season back in 2022, though its future remained uncertain for some time.
    Radhika Seth, Vogue, 17 Oct. 2025
  • Harwicz’s novels are more hallucinatory than supernatural—but a more provocative distinction between her books and others in this semi-subgenre is that, for her characters, motherhood does not cause animal rage and instability so much as instantiate them.
    Jessica Winter, New Yorker, 8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • This isn’t callousness or delusive optimism but, rather, a rebellion against the suffocating expectation that the elderly have foreclosed the possibility of joy.
    Hillary Kelly, The New Yorker, 21 Feb. 2024
  • To separate art from its historical framework is futile, and to reject it in an effort to censor past violence is a delusive act of virtue signaling.
    WSJ, WSJ, 5 July 2022
Adjective
  • Needle loss was basically nonexistent—just a few strays.
    Audrey Lee, Architectural Digest, 20 Oct. 2025
  • For a player of his stature, chances may be slim but never nonexistent, and that’s exactly how McIlroy sees it.
    Julio Cesar Valdera Morales, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Dealers and lenders have long engaged in deceptive and predatory practices that jack up prices for car buyers in order to line their pockets.
    Hugh Cameron, MSNBC Newsweek, 20 Oct. 2025
  • This looks like an attempt to clean up their devastated public image following the Federal Trade Commission’s strong BOTS Act and deceptive practices case against them.
    Jem Aswad, Variety, 20 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • There’s no feigned seriousness, no proclamations of honesty.
    T. M. Brown, New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2025
  • Stewart exclaimed with feigned enthusiasm.
    Judy Kurtz, The Hill, 9 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • But for a few unlucky people, chatbots powered by the technology have become a gaslighting, delusional menace.
    Diane Brady, Fortune, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Her protagonist, known to have been derived from herself in a few other ways, blunders along and is charming but delusional, unlike Austen’s fiercely independent and witty Elizabeth Bennet.
    Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 15 Oct. 2025

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Fictive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/fictive. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on fictive

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!