How to Use claptrap in a Sentence

claptrap

noun
  • I'm tired of hearing all that claptrap about how hard her life is.
  • His entire speech was nothing but claptrap.
  • His claim about the female body is complete claptrap, nonsense.
    — Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 24 Aug. 2012
  • Some cosmic claptrap is invoked, and the four are allowed back to Earth for one final concert.
    — Michael Heaton, cleveland.com, 18 May 2017
  • These are the people, rather than the nation, to whom Truss is appealing with her tax-cutting claptrap.
    — Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The New Republic, 9 Aug. 2022
  • Nor can the novelist answer why liberals have granted this claptrap such power.
    — Rumaan Alam, The New Republic, 9 Sep. 2020
  • This is not just culture war claptrap about a heretofore obscure academic theory.
    — W. James Antle Iii, The Week, 23 June 2021
  • And both their video ads on social media and the speeches at their convention were devoid of Marxist claptrap.
    — The Economist, 9 Sep. 2017
  • The wild likes to wring out all unnecessary claptrap and excess baggage until you’re left naked and exalted and clinging to the truth.
    — Emily Pennington, Outside Online, 1 Feb. 2023
  • The speculations are never heavy-handed or bogged down with obscure philosophic claptrap.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Jan. 2021
  • And jettisoning silly claptrap about good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, and a clear, easily definable line that demarcates it all.
    — Andy Meek, BGR, 4 May 2021
  • That meant rolling home with bloody scrapes full of gravel past old farmhouses cheap enough for mailmen and jazz musicians to buy, build claptrap chicken coops and grow weed in the backyard.
    — Daniel Duane, New York Times, 30 May 2023
  • Given Stephens’ record of dispensing unfounded claptrap, detailed above, to ask the question is to answer it.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2023
  • This is not some traditional sentimental claptrap about a family saying goodbye to the old homestead.
    — Christopher Arnott, courant.com, 19 Mar. 2022
  • His style is more rooted in George Jones than the bro-country and hick-hop claptrap that until recently dominated the airwaves.
    — Chuck Yarborough, cleveland.com, 26 Mar. 2018
  • But one is accustomed to hearing this claptrap from the right-wing fringe, not from anyone reaching Johnson’s elevated position in the government.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2023
  • Something about marginal utility, blah blah, and some Keynesian claptrap about wondrous government spending.
    — Andy Kessler, WSJ, 12 July 2020
  • One is that a Kennedy candidacy that gains any real traction alone will increase the political credibility of anti-vax claptrap, which already has more than enough.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2023
  • Behavioral-analysis claptrap abounds.
    — Graham Hillard, The Washington Examiner, 20 Mar. 2026
  • The post-1945 explosion in birth rates coincided with the rise of the television age and the profusion of social science claptrap to serve and soothe a nation anxious in its affluence.
    — Chris Stirewalt, The Hill, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Nolan’s main argument—for a streaming company that still commits in some way to the cinema experience—is not some elitist claptrap, but a reasonable plea from an artist who believes that movies are best enjoyed, if possible, in movie theaters.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 26 July 2017
  • This is Spielberg at his most pure and sensational, an undiluted cinematic experience that lacks any of his sentimental claptrap and steers clear of his tendency for multiple endings.
    — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 14 Dec. 2021
  • All this claptrap offends the romantic ethnicity being peddled, especially the tenor of Irish heritage that Branagh’s remote style misrepresents in nearly every scene.
    — Armond White, National Review, 19 Nov. 2021
  • The show is also virtually devoid of romantic escapades, a good thing since Dumas’ novel is filled with a lot of sentimental claptrap about fighting for defenseless women’s honor or seducing virtuous maidens or going to war due to the physical beauty of a monarch.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Because for all the claptrap Manchin and Sinema have spouted about the filibuster facilitating bipartisan compromise and building unity, their opposition to eliminating it is most intelligible as a matter of material politics.
    — Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, 18 Apr. 2022
  • For all the claptrap Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have spouted about the filibuster facilitating bipartisan compromise, their opposition to eliminating it is most intelligible as a matter of material politics.
    — Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, 18 Apr. 2022

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