costive

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 costive In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the movement. Jacob Heilbrunn, The New Republic, 23 Jan. 2020 Movies coiled up in other movies have a habit of becoming either costive or cute, but somehow Falardeau avoids the traps. Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 15 May 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for costive
Adjective
  • Those who are approved must cope with notoriously unreliable in-home nursing, a byproduct of the state’s penurious reimbursement rates.
    Carol Marbin Miller, Miami Herald, 17 Jan. 2025
  • Even so, the general picture of a mother’s absence and a daughter’s understandable resentment at having had to pick up the maternal slack in penurious conditions comes through loud and clear.
    Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2024
Adjective
  • But neither can anyone seriously accuse the United States of being ungenerous with its citizens’ lives and treasure or of having no ideals.
    Joshua Landis, Foreign Affairs, 19 Jan. 2016
  • This is the problem with the show: These women are just concocting reasons why the people on the other side suck, and it’s become the most uncharitable, the most ungenerous thing on Bravo.
    Brian Moylan, Vulture, 15 July 2024
Adjective
  • To attribute the corrosion of institutional trust to such bugbears as relativism or postmodernism is to ignore explanations that are both more concrete and more parsimonious.
    Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2025
  • In a perfect and parsimonious world, a single two-stage spacecraft would land on Mars, scoop up soil samples in situ, and transfer them to an ascent stage which would blast off into orbit.
    Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 13 Jan. 2025
Adjective
  • Florida is the only state in the geographic Deep South with a higher minimum wage than the federal government’s miserly $7.25 an hour.
    Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 18 Mar. 2025
  • With the arrival of pitchers and catchers, one of the coldest and miserly baseball offseasons in memory is nearing conclusion, and it can’t be understated that, other than the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets (on one player), hardly any team spent any money.
    Bill Madden, New York Daily News, 15 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • We Americans get slandered around the world as a bunch of fat, lazy, selfish slobs.
    Josh Hammer, Newsweek, 19 Mar. 2025
  • Listen to this article For every selfish motorist who blocks a fire hydrant.
    Leonard Greene, New York Daily News, 19 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • That’s perhaps an uncharitable read on what was overall a strong game by the Rangers, who allowed a tying goal to Artturi Lehkonen with 1:13 remaining, then couldn’t convert on an overtime power play.
    Peter Baugh, The Athletic, 15 Jan. 2025
  • Mangum wasn’t the only fraudster who preyed on the Left’s uncharitable assumptions about young white men, in particular, but non-minorities broadly.
    The Editors, National Review, 17 Dec. 2024
Adjective
  • Endowments are likely to become even more important as the federal government gets stingier with its support for higher education.
    Emma Whitford, Forbes, 7 Mar. 2025
  • The game matches the conference’s highest-scoring offense (New Mexico at 82.9 points per game) against its stingiest defense (SDSU at 63.1).
    Mark Zeigler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • Every year, a complacent, tightfisted city council turned down the recommendations.
    Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 2 Oct. 2023
  • Kotick played the tightfisted owner of the Oakland A’s.
    Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 31 May 2023

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Costive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/costive. Accessed 23 Mar. 2025.

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!