How to Use apologia in a Sentence

apologia

noun
  • One of the best jokes in movie history is an apologia for evil.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 5 July 2021
  • That talk rankles the old school, which hears it as an apologia for stock prices that seem to be bubbling over.
    — Bloomberg, latimes.com, 8 June 2018
  • Unilever seemed prepared for the backlash, adding a scoop of apologia to its statement.
    — Emily Heil, Anchorage Daily News, 26 July 2022
  • John’s confession, both his apologia and his life story, is told in the first person.
    — Margot Livesey, BostonGlobe.com, 13 July 2018
  • Not everyone, of course, has had that life experience; some might see this show as an apologia for the already indulged.
    — Chris Jones, New York Daily News, 28 Mar. 2024
  • The play at other times feels like the dramatist’s guilty apologia for leaving Kyiv when her mother refuses to budge.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 21 Sep. 2023
  • This essay, an apologia pro vita sua (defense of one’s life), seems designed to justify that offense.
    — Armond White, National Review, 19 Feb. 2021
  • Barr offers an extended apologia that tries to square his position on putting people to death with his religious faith.
    — New York Times, 27 Feb. 2022
  • An apologia writ in hair about what happens when a muscular intellect is married to frail corporate governance.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2023
  • The movie is a celebration of Barbie and a subterranean apologia for Barbie.
    — Willa Paskin, New York Times, 11 July 2023
  • Stated in such bald terms, the reconciliationist narrative seems like pure apologia for the white supremacy.
    — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 1 Nov. 2017
  • Demonstrators disrupted the campus, calling his theory an apologia for the status quo.
    — Washington Post, 27 Dec. 2021
  • The Times eventually published a long public apologia, penned by the publisher himself.
    — Steve Almond, Longreads, 3 Apr. 2018
  • On more contemporary matters, Guelzo himself has been accused of flirting with apologia.
    — Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2021
  • Turning his apologia for bad Chinese behavior into a diplomatic affront.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 21 June 2023
  • No such apologia can be made for Baudelaire, who was nonetheless the greatest poet-critic of his time and who will remain a titan for as long as there is literature.
    — Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books, 23 Mar. 2022
  • Behind him on a television screen an instructional video whose subject matter would be most accurately described as rape apologia was playing.
    — Matthew Walther, TheWeek, 10 Oct. 2020
  • Frum’s apologia is so riddled with errors of commission, omission, perspective, and internal inconsistency that his heart hardly even seems to be in it.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 6 Feb. 2024
  • The album ends in a heart-rending nine-minute apologia written from the character to his daughter, offering explanations for his bad choices and asking for forgiveness.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 14 Apr. 2017
  • The #MeToo fallout brought about a flood of firings, new organizations and pledges to change, but a vast array of apologia from perpetrators also ensued.
    — Kasia Pilat, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2018
  • The regrettable thing is that Heritage’s apologia for policing’s past is being aired at the same exact time as one of the most effective and visible protests over race and policing in recent memory.
    — Barry Friedman, Slate Magazine, 26 Sep. 2017
  • Her insistence that Ellen is unhappy (when, in fact, Montgomery’s Ellen seems the most resilient — or at least healthily resigned — of the three) serves as both an apologia and an attack.
    — Kerry Reid, chicagotribune.com, 11 June 2019
  • Too often, the postscripts that accompany the memos—mostly written by the original authors reflecting on their policy’s subsequent ups and downs—come across as an apologia.
    — Foreign Affairs, 22 Aug. 2023
  • The speeches come, Abelson notes, as Democrats engage in a fresh round of soul-searching touched off by the publication of Hillary Clinton’s post-election apologia.
    — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2017
  • In response to the Times report, Weinstein released a statement, part apology and part apologia, part explanation and part contrition.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Perhaps some will find this gentleness frustrating, and interpret it as an apologia for a complacency inappropriate to our angry, angular, activist times.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 15 May 2026
  • In a post-truth world, pugilists and zealots dismiss such scholarly arguments as apologia for Muslim violence or as a weak case for pluralism that divests Hindus of their rights as the majority.
    — Supriya Gandhi, Foreign Affairs, 13 July 2020
  • Like many Marxist apologias, this fails to grapple with the inherent authoritarianism that is embedded in an illiberal thought system.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 28 June 2017
  • Following his introduction to Hungarian conservatives, Rubin has put out a fair amount of apologia for the Orban regime.
    — Robert Schmad, The Washington Examiner, 8 Apr. 2026
  • At just under 900 pages, the book is most thoroughly a sprawling apologia for Roth’s treatment of women, on and off the page, and a minutely detailed account of his victimization at the hands of his two wives.
    — New York Times, 29 Mar. 2021

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