How to Use canonical in a Sentence

canonical

adjective
  • What are your feelings about when canonical works of art come to be defined by their moral flaws?
    — David Marchese David Marchesephotograph By Mamadi Doumbouya, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2022
  • Books by white authors became the canonical ones framing race as a form of caste.
    — Gaiutra Bahadur, The New Republic, 25 Nov. 2020
  • The best way to think of this syncing system is that the server copy of a file is the canonical file.
    — Scott Gilbertson, Wired, 2 June 2020
  • There was a return to the canonical pieces that define our favorites.
    — Luisa Zargani, Footwear News, 23 June 2026
  • Our canonical guide includes where each film takes place in the series timeline.
    — Chris Snellgrove, EW.com, 29 July 2025
  • The archer keeps a canonical story-style log of our campaign, which at this point is hundreds of pages long.
    — L.j. Kilgore, Ars Technica, 28 June 2020
  • And just as there’s no doubting the canonical impact of the album, the same can be said for its cover.
    — Zachary Lipez, Washington Post, 14 June 2019
  • Rob entered the game as neither a canonical gamer nor a Housewife.
    — Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 27 Feb. 2026
  • What if our canonical knowledge of this world — and the characters’ knowledge of it — were off?
    — Bill Goodykoontz, AZCentral.com, 8 July 2025
  • This is not the case with Kirk, who has no canonical reason to cross paths with his future colleagues.
    — Richard Edwards, Space.com, 14 Aug. 2025
  • But are these even real, canonical fates for these characters, or just what Mike wants for them?
    — Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 1 Jan. 2026
  • For once, a canonical movie is becoming a play, not a musical.
    — Hillary Busis, Vanity Fair, 22 Dec. 2025
  • Each involves a new cast in a new bar, and over the course of the evening, unexpected twists on a canonical text emerge.
    — Nicole Blackwood, chicagotribune.com, 6 June 2019
  • The canonical data tell only part of the story, and the least flattering part at that.
    — Daniel Waldenstrom, Foreign Affairs, 19 May 2025
  • The missing piece ultimately tells us more than the canonical body could ever hope to say.
    — Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times, 6 Dec. 2021
  • The big one is that the ideal canonical format for storing data long-term is plaintext.
    — Scott Gilbertson, WIRED, 24 June 2024
  • The sequence of nigiri is canonical.
    — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 12 Mar. 2026
  • There are thoughts like that for many of the characters and especially the canonical ones.
    — Mike Fleming Jr, Deadline, 30 Aug. 2024
  • Think about the canonical moving pictures of the civil-rights movement.
    — Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic, 1 Apr. 2018
  • Most people don’t know this about him, and early translations of his work (most of which are canonical) don’t play this up at all.
    — Gabriel Roth, Slate Magazine, 16 Feb. 2017
  • The canonical Swadesh lists have between a hundred and two hundred and fifteen items.
    — Philip Ball, The New Yorker, 27 Apr. 2021
  • Yet there is nothing eternal or canonical or irreversible about this system.
    — Jessica Winter, New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2026
  • The canonical example is of course our own moon, a decently big chunk of rock that orbits Earth.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 21 Mar. 2025
  • To then spit out convincing, canonical answers about every fact ever.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 15 May 2026
  • Such nice things cannot be said for BananaDrama’s performance of the same now-canonical tune.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 11 Feb. 2021
  • His greatness is justly canonical.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 17 Jan. 2026
  • The rate of Dickens’ prodigious output—two canonical novels across twelve months—conveys the essence of his craft.
    — Literary Hub, 21 July 2025
  • Each set of three bases in DNA can designate one of the 20 canonical amino acids.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Muse-ing doesn’t get much more canonical than that one-two shot, on top of the fact that her clothes on Richards’ frame secured him fashion status, too.
    — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2024
  • The canonical image of the Summer of Love may be most useful as a cautionary tale.
    — James Hamblin, The Atlantic, 19 Feb. 2021

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