How to Use colonial in a Sentence

colonial

1 of 2 adjective
Definition of colonialnext
Synonyms for colonialnext
  • The port had been very important in colonial times.
  • The country was a colonial power.
  • The book describes life in Colonial America.
  • The gambit fails to please them, thanks to the long shadow of Japanese colonial rule.
    — Bonnie Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug. 2023
  • In 1711, colonial leaders passed a bill clearing the names of some convicted in Salem.
    — CBS News, 31 Oct. 2023
  • Because the French Resistance was also the beginning of the end of the colonial system.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period, by the way.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 2023
  • India’s extensive rail network is one of the largest in the world and built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule.
    — Ivan Watson, CNN, 5 June 2023
  • The colonial government had granted it the rights to an area spanning nearly 8,000 square miles, over half the size of Belgium.
    — Ngofeen Mputubwele, WIRED, 21 Aug. 2023
  • White failure is contagious, a threat to the colonial order.
    — Darryl Pinckney, The New York Review of Books, 16 Mar. 2023
  • But this Shakespeare is bound up with the colonial project and has yet to be properly untangled from it.
    — Time, 16 Aug. 2023
  • India’s extensive rail network, one of the largest in the world, was built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule.
    — Deepak Rao, CNN, 8 July 2023
  • The Zionists also didn’t want to be the colonial masters of the Palestinians by employing them.
    — Emily Bazelon, New York Times, 1 Feb. 2024
  • The three-bedroom home, built in classic colonial style, has two bathrooms and a wraparound porch overlooking the ocean.
    — Dobrina Zhekova, Travel + Leisure, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Charles, by contrast, hasn’t apologized for the monarchy’s role in slavery or the uglier parts of Britain’s colonial past.
    — Karla Adam, Washington Post, 31 Oct. 2023
  • After more than two hundred years of French slavery and colonial rule, Haiti broke free and emerged as the first nation to outlaw slavery and the slave trade in 1804.
    — Marlene L. Daut, Essence, 17 Oct. 2023
  • Coveted for its beauty and charisma, the macaw was sold as a pet to the colonial elite or defeathered for clothing.
    — Terrence McCoy, Washington Post, 23 Nov. 2023
  • Books were rare and expensive in colonial America, but Franklin had an idea.
    — Elizabeth Webster, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Apr. 2024
  • Relations between the countries have been fraught, largely due to the colonial legacy.
    — Harold Maass, The Week, 8 May 2023
  • Scott played the antagonist, a stand-in for British colonial oppression.
    — Joshua St. Clair, Men's Health, 24 Mar. 2023
  • The image doesn’t show us much, other than a few colonial buildings, a square and a couple of ghostly figures straying into the frame.
    — Thomas Page, CNN, 1 Mar. 2024
  • This was the label—always upper-case—that had been given to the division of colonial India in August 1947.
    — Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 14 Aug. 2023
  • And, of course, Britain’s colonial economy hinged on chattel slavery.
    — TIME, 5 Oct. 2023
  • In Lessing’s stories, colonial wives are baking scones in a rage at eleven o’clock at night or confined to a sickbed filthy with disappointment.
    — Darryl Pinckney, The New York Review of Books, 16 Mar. 2023
  • Trot, a genre of Korean pop music, hearkens to the Japanese colonial era and has a Sinatra-like crooner sound.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 Mar. 2023
  • The cloth—colorful, breathable, durable—was perfect for the humid climates and hard labor of those who lived under colonial rule.
    — Raksha Vasudevan, Harper's BAZAAR, 9 May 2023
  • Stepping out onto the third-story rooftop terrace, I’m met with panoramic views of the colonial city, a longtime favorite among T+L readers.
    — Catherine Tansey, Travel + Leisure, 27 Jan. 2024
  • Both films also dwell on the role of art in supporting sadistic colonial enterprise, as noted above by Gálvez.
    — Carolina A. Miranda, Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan. 2024
  • The United States, like Europe, needs to finally attend to the gaping wounds created by its colonial crimes.
    — Marlene L. Daut, The New Yorker, 18 Mar. 2023
  • For curators, there was a lack of clarity about which modern tribes had claims to holdings dating back to before colonial record-keeping began.
    — Julia Jacobs, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2024
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colonial

2 of 2 noun
  • They bought a Colonial on a quiet street.
  • This brick Chestnut Hill colonial has a sauna, a rock wall, and wine and cigar rooms.
    — Amanda Kaufman, BostonGlobe.com, 18 Jan. 2023
  • The red-brick colonial is approached by a long brick walkway and a series of steps.
    — Mary Carole McCauley, Baltimore Sun, 19 Jan. 2023
  • The air was still, and the sky was clear when the brigade of men in tactical gear arrived at the two-story brick colonial.
    — Hanna Krueger, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Apr. 2023
  • The biggest sale was an 18-room colonial in Bentleyville, while Brecksville had two listings sell.
    — cleveland, 14 Nov. 2022
  • Advertisement The land the park sits on had served as the city’s dump from the era of Spanish colonial rule up to the early 20th Century.
    — Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct. 2023
  • The brick colonial built in 1916 has six bedrooms ,three full bathrooms, two half-bathrooms and a detached, four-car garage.
    — Brendel Hightower, Detroit Free Press, 8 May 2023
  • The brick colonial built in 1916 has six bedrooms, three full bathrooms, two half-bathrooms and a detached, four-car garage.
    — Brendel Hightower, USA TODAY, 9 May 2023
  • When asked how beauty is viewed in Ghana, Maame says that there are two lenses to look through: the colonial and the traditional.
    — Kaitlyn McNab, Allure, 17 Nov. 2021
  • The white, wood-frame colonial, boarded up for the past five years, has been an eyesore and potential health hazard on its block.
    — Rebecca Lurye, courant.com, 4 Nov. 2021
  • It’s this very basic red brick colonial with white columns that has been copied in a million apartments since.
    — Laura Johnston, cleveland, 1 Mar. 2022
  • Lured by teaser rates, folks who couldn’t afford a home left their apartments and bought a ranch, colonial, or condo.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 10 Nov. 2021
  • But the dish had a cultural adaptation in Mexico during the colonial times, in the 16th and 17th centuries.
    — Imelda García, Dallas News, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The law was laid down in 1936 under British colonial rule, when English criminal law was imposed on Malaysia.
    — Julia Malleck, Quartz, 24 May 2023
  • The red rice is said to have been created when Penda Mbaye, a Senegalese cook who worked in the home of a French colonial governor, ran out of barley.
    — Jonmaesha Beltran, The Arizona Republic, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Zionism in its ideal form is not a destructive colonial empire, but a chance for Jews to return home.
    — Landon Block, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Nov. 2023
  • Putin took a pronounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago.
    — Timothy Snyder, The New Yorker, 28 Apr. 2022
  • The company offered him corporate housing, a spacious colonial in the city, for a year.
    — WSJ, 1 Aug. 2022
  • This 1920s colonial designed by Maura McEvoy in Minnesota features dark green paint on the shutters and entrance of the home for a vintage look that still feels fresh.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, House Beautiful, 8 June 2022
  • Though this colonial primarily is constructed from brick, some rooms have stone floors and walls.
    — Mary Carole McCauley, Baltimore Sun, 21 July 2023
  • The two-story colonial on Edgewater Drive sold for $7 million, reports Megan Sims.
    — cleveland, 3 Oct. 2022
  • One by one, the family purchased the eight colonial, cape and split-level homes and transformed the properties into group home settings.
    — Andrew Brown, Hartford Courant, 24 Apr. 2022
  • Exactly where to fit them into this small brick colonial remains an open question.
    — Michael Dirda, Washington Post, 7 Sep. 2022
  • Many of the dead were teenagers, which was unusual even for colonial times, when the very old and very young were most likely to die, which suggests the hard labor and conditions at the furnace took a wrenching toll.
    — Usha Lee McFarling, STAT, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Some of the remains are two centuries old and likely came from all over the world, including from German colonial occupations in Africa.
    — Christopher Parker, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Mar. 2023
  • At the top of the ladder were people of European descent, followed by those of mixed colonial and Indigenous heritage.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2022
  • Ahead of the visit, many South Koreans were eager to see whether Kishida would issue a fresh apology for Japan’s colonial rule.
    — Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post, 7 May 2023
  • Many residents of Saint-Louis can no longer bear the sight of a colonizer’s statue, but what to do with the remnants of a troubled colonial past remains contentious.
    — New York Times, 5 May 2022
  • During colonial times, putting a candle in the window signified that a home was open and welcome to travelers passing through.
    — Jenna Sims, Southern Living, 24 Oct. 2023
  • With the first houses constructed in the 1960s by five builders, McLean Hamlet contains a range of architectural styles, from capes to colonials and contemporaries.
    — Hope Hodge Seck, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'colonial.' 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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