How to Use Confucian in a Sentence

Confucian

adjective
  • The passion reflects a tradition in the Confucian belt of East Asia that the path to glory is to study.
    — Nicholas D. Kristof, Mercury News, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Government officials noted the island’s drift away from Confucian values.
    — Timothy Nerozzi, The Washington Examiner, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Sip omija tea in shaded pavilions, while elders trace calligraphy on rice paper in the Confucian school, while at dusk, cranes wheel overhead and lanterns flicker along the riverbank.
    — Lewis Nunn, Forbes.com, 24 Aug. 2025
  • Chinese doctors warned clinicians that patients may deploy Confucian metaphors framing hereditary cancer as moral condemnation.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harpers Magazine, 19 Sep. 2025
  • In China, Mohists took an artisan position, forcefully arguing against the Confucian ideal to transmit rather than create.
    — Big Think, 18 Nov. 2025
  • Here, against the intimate interiority of this elegant narrative, untamed urges clash with Confucian ideals of filial piety and Buddhist undertones of the suffering caused by worldly attachments.
    — Literary Hub, 28 May 2026
  • Buddhist modernity made a deep impact on thinkers like Tan Sitong who saw in the emerging world of electromagnetic communication an expression of New Confucian philosophy.
    — Big Think, 18 Nov. 2025
  • Likewise, Stephan Angle proposes that the capacity to program software, which can encourage certain virtues, suggests that the ubiquity of AI may be of use in constructing a society with Confucian values.
    — Big Think, 18 Nov. 2025
  • In 2022, researchers fired particle accelerator beams at fragile pages from Germany’s Gutenberg Bible and Confucian texts from Korea, both from the mid-15th Century, with the Korean pages older.
    — Ethan Baron, Mercury News, 24 Jan. 2026

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