How to Use ivory tower in a Sentence

ivory tower

noun
Definition of ivory towernext
  • The book was written by some college professor who's spent her entire professional life in an ivory tower.
  • Winona is naïve, trapped in the ivory tower of her father’s making.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 12 Sep. 2019
  • From the ivory tower to the kitchen table: there’s a disconnect in the way that work is designed.
    — Chris Westfall, Forbes, 26 Oct. 2021
  • The good professor has spent too much time in his ivory tower.
    — WSJ, 20 Apr. 2021
  • The Left is a ticking time bomb, and the Right shows little sympathy for those purged by the ivory tower.
    — Aron Ravin, National Review, 3 Apr. 2022
  • That is a far cry from the days when its consultants stuck mainly to blue-sky thoughts in their ivory towers.
    — The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018
  • By noon, the little ivory tower of the chatroom had gotten sucked in.
    — Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 2 Mar. 2012
  • Arkansas has been a mess this week because of the splinter cells within the ivory tower.
    — Eric Bolin, ajc, 1 Dec. 2017
  • That body of ivory tower scholarship isn’t even taught in public schools.
    — Clarence Page, chicagotribune.com, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Her playing, however, is light-years away from the ivory tower.
    — Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2022
  • Some young scientists are more likely to leave the ivory tower than others.
    — Jonathan Wosen, STAT, 15 Dec. 2023
  • But economists are super-slow to learn — way too ivory towered.
    — Ken Fisher, USA TODAY, 6 May 2018
  • Must be nice to sit atop that Madison Avenue ivory tower, looking down on us with those luscious locks.
    — Dave Clark, The Enquirer, 27 July 2023
  • An ivory tower above and beyond the messy planes of politics is an illusion.
    — Yangyang Cheng, The Atlantic, 23 Nov. 2021
  • How does a union that originated on Michigan factory floors fit in the ivory towers of academia?
    — Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press, 19 Feb. 2018
  • In some ways, tennis is still an ivory tower sport, but that rep is slowly changing, according to Skye Muller.
    — Kerry Pieri, Harper's BAZAAR, 28 July 2022
  • Academia is often thought of as an ivory tower; a place where the brightest and most thirsty minds convene to acquire more knowledge and expertise.
    — Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 16 May 2021
  • Though many describe her as a visionary, Sullivan would rather chat with students on the quad than dwell in an ivory tower.
    — Rachel Blount, Star Tribune, 31 Aug. 2020
  • Outside the ivory tower The challenges faced by schools of public health mirror the broader public health field, especially in the US.
    — Annalisa Merelli, Quartz, 7 May 2020
  • One way to make academics seem interesting is to thrust them from the ivory tower and into the world, as seen in films from the European art house to Hollywood.
    — Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 12 Dec. 2023
  • Haglund also stressed that not all the most interesting work is relegated to the ivory tower.
    — Tamarra Kemsley, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 June 2022
  • There’s no point in me doing academia, sitting in my ivory tower, not interacting with anyone.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 24 Feb. 2023
  • This hybrid practice repeatedly took him out of the academic ivory tower and into rural Africa, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and hip-hop clubs in the Bronx.
    — New York Times, 12 Dec. 2021
  • But the ivory tower ideal of the campus as an arena for the free exchange of ideas — one being challenged at colleges across the country — exploded over the Manning episode.
    — Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Lifted on its piers, the marine center looks like a literal embodiment of the ivory tower metaphor.
    — Boyce Upholt, WIRED, 19 Nov. 2022
  • Most of science’s #MeToo stories have been confined to campus, the ivory tower, and raucous conferences at bland hotels.
    — Sarah Scoles, Outside Online, 21 May 2018
  • Are there potential regulators who aren’t off in their own versions of an ivory tower?
    — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 19 Mar. 2023
  • Of course, Childs could have entered the federal judiciary's ivory tower years ago.
    — Bakari Sellers, CNN, 4 Feb. 2022
  • The crux of the panel was this: After false-start startups and decades relegated to the ivory tower, these panelists believe quantum computing is ready to step into the limelight.
    — Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 7 Mar. 2024
  • Of course, there have long been attempts at political interference in academia, with a distrust of elitism smoldering beneath the widespread disdain for the ivory tower.
    — Pamela Paul, The Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2024

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