How to Use bona fide in a Sentence

bona fide

adjective
  • They have a bona fide claim for the loss.
  • His latest record was a bona fide hit.
  • She has established her position as a bona fide celebrity.
  • Those fakes opened my eyes to the bona fide world of synthetics.
    — Irv Erdos, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Nov. 2023
  • Not just fringe players, but bona fide stars and impact types.
    — Allan Mitchell, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
  • But that’s not the same as bona fide protection against the virus.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Whether or not this dry spell turns into a bona fide drought remains to be seen.
    — Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 11 May 2022
  • Think about places closer to home yet far enough away to feel like a bona fide journey.
    — Gregory Wallace, CNN, 21 June 2022
  • But the club doesn’t have a bona fide star to build around and is hoping for some luck in the draft.
    — Tom Withers, chicagotribune.com, 25 May 2021
  • The Knicks look like bona fide title contenders.
    — Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 9 May 2026
  • This is not the first time that the bona fide rule has led to controversy.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 17 June 2021
  • Can’t think of a team that has done it without a bona fide superstar.
    — Ira Winderman, sun-sentinel.com, 28 Feb. 2022
  • Nine months at the new residence will be required to make a move bona fide.
    — Ben Thomas | [email protected], al, 1 Nov. 2022
  • But Nunez — a bona fide big leaguer for the last three seasons — could have jumped ship.
    — Evan Petzold, Detroit Free Press, 29 Mar. 2021
  • Against the Yankees, Alexander looked like a bona fide starter.
    — Evan Petzold, Detroit Free Press, 1 Apr. 2022
  • But as a bona fide leader doing the little-but-big things a captain should.
    — Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 7 Nov. 2020
  • No shortage of bona fide collectors have added a Chanel watch to their vaults.
    — Stephen Watson, Robb Report, 1 Apr. 2025
  • Chappell Roan is a bona fide pop star who’s cemented her place in the canon.
    — Althea Legaspi, Rolling Stone, 2 Aug. 2024
  • Isikhuemhen and Rosborough are now bona fide stars in the world of truffles.
    — Andrew Kornylak, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 May 2021
  • The work in question, it should be noted, was not a bona fide van Dongen.
    — Alex Greenberger, ARTnews.com, 8 May 2026
  • For as long as Zoey Deutch has been in the public, she's been a bona fide hair chameleon.
    — Marci Robin, Allure, 4 Mar. 2024
  • This is George Clooney, bona fide movie star, at the close of 2020.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 23 Dec. 2020
  • More than that though, they’ve been led by young actors who are having fun dressing the part of bona fide scream queens.
    — Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 16 July 2024
  • Bryant, a bona fide red-zone threat, keeps developing and Njoku will get a lot of snaps.
    — cleveland, 14 Nov. 2020
  • Still, with the box office curtailed since March, bona fide hits will be few and far between.
    — Kyle Buchanan, New York Times, 14 Oct. 2020
  • As adults, bats—the only mammals in the world capable of bona fide flight—are all about their wings.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 11 Jan. 2023
  • In any case, there was no bona fide dispute in 2020 about the electoral votes.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 16 June 2022
  • To talk to Wilson is to witness a bona fide storyteller at work.
    — Perrie Samotin, Glamour, 17 Jan. 2024
  • The question is whether this moment is going to evolve into a bona fide movement.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 14 June 2026
  • The site is brimming with orange- and brown-hued decor, which is sure to upgrade the space into a bona fide oasis.
    — Amy Schulman, Peoplemag, 19 Sep. 2023

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