How to Use apocryphal in a Sentence

apocryphal

adjective
  • Some of it’s just apocryphal - things that people want to believe.
    — Jim Ryan, Forbes.com, 12 June 2026
  • Then there were the apocryphal stories about the money, ones that ran around the junior staff.
    — Jamie Fewery, Harper’s Magazine , 22 June 2022
  • Sure there’s that ancient Greek wrestler, but that story seems apocryphal at best.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 22 Nov. 2025
  • The story of the waffle iron has taken on an apocryphal tone all these years later.
    — Matt Blitz, Popular Mechanics, 15 July 2016
  • The blueberry in a cherry pie, as an apocryphal Texas adage goes.
    — Washington Post, 15 Sep. 2021
  • This story may be apocryphal; Baldwin gives us reasons to doubt it.
    — Charlie Tyson, The Atlantic, 18 Oct. 2022
  • One anecdote from around the same time, possibly apocryphal, is widely shared.
    — Simon Akam, Bloomberg.com, 23 May 2017
  • Over time, this story, clearly apocryphal in places, has been sanitized.
    — Janna Levin, New York Times, 26 Dec. 2016
  • Davis acknowledged that the story could be apocryphal; his source was the grandson of the man in question.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Wired, 22 Sep. 2019
  • That quotation is perhaps apocryphal but also contains a large grain of truth.
    — Viviane Callier, Scientific American, 27 Sep. 2023
  • Some see this as a new version of the apocryphal story of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
    — John Cherwa, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2024
  • Phillips named her book for a (probably apocryphal) story about Neel as a young mother.
    — Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 8 May 2022
  • Contract terms were not as readily available 75 years ago, so this may be apocryphal.
    — Dan Freedman, Forbes, 12 Dec. 2024
  • The story is most likely apocryphal but so delightful that it has been repeated for decades.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 25 Oct. 2024
  • Even still, some Christians continued to read and value apocryphal texts.
    — Christy Cobb, The Conversation, 26 Feb. 2026
  • Such narratives are usually apocryphal, or, at the very least, simplified to a fault.
    — Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker, 2 Dec. 2022
  • The picture of a masterly Putin calling every shot is apocryphal.
    — Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 13 Mar. 2018
  • Strung across one shelf of 3D printers is a black flag, a take on Blackbeard’s (apocryphal) pirate flag.
    — Justin Ling, WIRED, 2 May 2024
  • The Viking burial, for example, is apocryphal; the Vikings were known to burn their dead in boats, but kept them parked on land.
    — Lisa Wells, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
  • The apocryphal tales, however, toy with the idea of the God-man revealing his power early on.
    — Mary Dzon, The Conversation, 12 Dec. 2025
  • There are many versions of an apocryphal tale that explains how the Yucatán Peninsula got its name.
    — Melissa Mohr, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 July 2021
  • One of the best apocryphal quips from the Cold War was attributed to Henry Kissinger.
    — Jordan Michael Smith, The New Republic, 13 Apr. 2022
  • As the — perhaps apocryphal — origin story goes, Pihl came up with the idea while gazing out of the window from her workshop bench.
    — Oscar Holland, CNN Money, 28 Nov. 2025
  • The Ty Herndon story, the way it's told in Nashville, is almost apocryphal.
    — Jason Sheeler, PEOPLE.com, 17 June 2022
  • Unlike the apocryphal messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens and then promptly died, Retera was just fine.
    — Ezra Dyer, Car and Driver, 23 Nov. 2020
  • The story sounds far-fetched, like one of the many apocryphal yarns of royal transformation that litter folklore and fairytales.
    — Janine Henni, People.com, 28 Apr. 2025
  • How Covid vaccine skeptics came to embrace an apocryphal reading of a 1996 law.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 4 Aug. 2021
  • Whether or not the Norbit Effect is real or apocryphal is impossible to prove.
    — Joe Reid, Vulture, 21 Mar. 2022
  • The story is probably apocryphal, but the phrase pairs nicely with the display of the scientist's middle finger.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 17 May 2020
  • And then there is the apocryphal nonsense that pads the scripts, as if the facts of Victoria’s life and reign were not sufficient to hold our interest.
    — David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Jan. 2018

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