How to Use oracular in a Sentence

oracular

adjective
Definition of oracularnext
Synonyms for oracularnext
  • Among members of the New Right, the works of Ayn Rand became oracular.
    — Win McCormack, The New Republic, 17 Sep. 2020
  • The first two scenes of the movie capture his oracular quality.
    — Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, 17 Nov. 2022
  • The oracular urge runs hot through Coelho’s lines but rarely generates much light.
    — Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2020
  • Dawson seizes the humor, pathos and tragedy of the sorrow songs of the cottonfield with an oracular vehemence.
    — Joseph Horowitz, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
  • At the crest of the house, where visitors ascend from what will be a dark, cave-like first floor, Irish offers a lemony hope, a kind of oracular Philadelphia epiphany that says: This can end.
    — Stephan Salisbury, Philly.com, 13 Apr. 2018
  • Dazzled by Casanova’s glib claims to wield a mysterious oracular power, Bragadin offered to adopt him as a quasi-son on the spot.
    — Clare Bucknell, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
  • The score, by Herdís Stefánsdóttir, is a kind of musical thundercloud, and the dialogue has an oracular growl to match.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2023
  • This sounds like pure manipulation of the oracular cult.
    — James Romm, WSJ, 13 Dec. 2018
  • The oracular formula is known as the Feynman path integral.
    — Quanta Magazine, 6 Feb. 2023
  • Mr Eliasson’s verdict on climate activism in art is more oracular.
    — The Economist, 19 Sep. 2019
  • These lines do not reveal some kind of oracular capacity in Lovecraft.
    — Siddhartha Deb, The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2021
  • Disavowed theatrics accord Rich a tone of oracular power.
    — Wayne Koestenbaum, New York Times, 15 July 2016
  • Atwood has long been Canada’s most famous writer, and current events have polished the oracular sheen of her reputation.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2017
  • Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men.
    — Maggie Nelson, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
  • Her sentences are often spare and pared down and sculpted, and can feel almost oracular at times, conversational at others.
    — Alex Marshall, New York Times, 8 Oct. 2020
  • And just because these models weren’t perfectly oracular doesn’t mean anyone was lying.
    — Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 10 Apr. 2020
  • His bogus oracular abilities, in city after city, proved to be a social lubricant.
    — Clare Bucknell, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
  • The novel offers a series of strong images of crowds, joined by a light, suggestive plot, and animated by oracular commentary.
    — Paul Elie, The New Yorker, 5 July 2020
  • His comments were aphoristic or oracular, but often infused with wit.
    — Martin Rees, Newsweek, 14 Mar. 2018
  • That Thursday, the finale took on an oracular significance when, weeks into rehearsal, McDonnell and the rest of the cast learned that, due to safety measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, their show was being cancelled.
    — Emily Witt, The New Yorker, 22 Mar. 2020
  • This oracular quality gave Biden’s address a genuine and unexpected kind of grandeur.
    — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 26 Aug. 2020
  • The hero and author of the poem is Pampa Kampana, who as a girl becomes the conduit for a goddess, channeling her oracular pronouncements and wielding her magical powers.
    — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 31 Jan. 2023
  • Levy, whose prose is at once declarative and concrete and touched with an almost oracular pithiness, has a gift for imbuing ordinary observations with the magic of metaphor.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2021
  • In this essay and other recent work, he’s turned away from the self-examining quality of his earlier writing to a literary style that’s oracular.
    — George Packer, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Are these words the smug pronouncement of a dead artifact, the oracular invocation of a higher power, the commentary of a poet interrogating the value of his work?
    — Paula Marantz Cohen, WSJ, 28 July 2017
  • His terse remarks take on an oracular quality that can preclude disagreement.
    — Jerry Adler, Newsweek, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Farallon Capital became one of the world’s largest funds, due mainly to Steyer’s oracular way with undervalued stocks.
    — Rob Haskell, Vogue, 14 Nov. 2018
  • The puppet of my father had a tendency toward oracular pronouncements.
    — Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2023
  • But that oracular status is also why MoMA’s shortcomings were always cast in so unforgiving a glare.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Oct. 2019
  • These lectures were must-attend events, packed by students expecting to be dazzled by the oracular insights of professorial sages.
    — Jeffrey Collins, WSJ, 18 Mar. 2022

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