How to Use dervish in a Sentence

dervish

noun
  • Evan — quick, spinning, a dervish of a linebacker — would drill him.
    — Michael Powell, New York Times, 13 Feb. 2020
  • This wasn’t spread pick-and-roll and whirling dervish in transition and making plays.
    — Manny Navarro, miamiherald, 9 Jan. 2018
  • Shannon is a dervish of despair and a black hole of need, but Archie still loves her.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 26 Sep. 2024
  • Ries is a whirling dervish of the startup and innovation world.
    — Adam Lashinsky, Fortune, 26 Feb. 2018
  • Anna is a whirling dervish who talks in her sleep all night long, even getting up to stand on the bed sometimes!
    — Ellie Delano, Woman's Day, 9 Aug. 2011
  • Queen Angela was first, proceeded by a whirling-dervish jester.
    — Michael Dumas, AL.com, 7 Feb. 2018
  • So crank the tunes, pop open a bottle of vino, and marinate in the swirling, dervish of chaos.
    — Tim Moffatt, EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
  • Eminem is a mischievous, whirling dervish, wrestling real and imagined demons side by side.
    — Bob Guccione Jr, Spin, 21 Aug. 2023
  • That 2-year-old whirling dervish may be pretending to be a superhero.
    — Kate Stone Lombardi, Good Housekeeping, 9 Dec. 2022
  • His large collage drawing surrounds images cut from anatomy books with whirling dervish-like lines.
    — New York Times, 4 Feb. 2021
  • To conclude, my aim in this is not to flagellate myself in a dervish of self-indulgence.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2010
  • Cox’s Peggy is a dervish of dance energy wrapped up in a virginal package.
    — Robert W. Butler, kansascity.com, 3 May 2017
  • Amazing dance music for mutant youngsters like myself, whirling-dervish like in my bedroom.
    — Liza Lentini, SPIN, 31 Mar. 2023
  • Admittedly, on its best day, Penn Station feels like a whirling dervish.
    — Dana O’Neil, CNN Money, 28 May 2026
  • When conducting, Bernstein was a whirling dervish of flailing arms and flashing teeth.
    — A.d. Amorosi, SPIN, 20 Dec. 2023
  • Bruno Frisoni found a tall fez in a collection forming a stylish tablescape and spent most of the evening whirling like a dervish in it.
    — Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 4 Feb. 2019
  • But McKinnon’s dervish routine, all kicks and fist bumps and grins, swaggers.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 3 Nov. 2019
  • Dru Smith remains a whirling dervish on defense, delivering three more steals.
    — Barry Jackson, Miami Herald, 27 Dec. 2025
  • And, toward the end, some of the men start to spin — upright this time — on the spot in the off-kilter upper-body stance of dervishes.
    — Alastair MacAulay, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Robbie throws herself into the role of a silent-screen starlet, giving a whirling dervish of a performance.
    — Vulture, 18 Nov. 2022
  • Up the East Coast comes Eleanor, Leo’s former best friend and a whirling dervish in a daffodil dress.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 13 June 2024
  • The dervishes have provided Turkey with some of its most iconic images.
    — Erin Cunningham, Washington Post, 2 Jan. 2018
  • Pellucid shots, each a couple of football fields big, whoosh over skyscrapers, elephant herds, and whirling dervishes.
    — Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2023
  • My littlest whirling dervish tilted on his axis for a few more rotations, before collapsing in a sweaty heap next to me on the grass.
    — Sarah Evans, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • Bucky Irving is really something with his whirling dervish moves — not just this Sunday but every week.
    — Michael Salfino, The Athletic, 24 Nov. 2024
  • The color red, recurrent in her work, finds its origin here in the often colorful dresses worn by whirling dervishes.
    — Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle, Forbes, 1 Jan. 2025
  • Sitting in the booth one night, Pendarvis is a whirling dervish fueled by Classic Coke and Kools.
    — Rodney Ho, ajc, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Under Lore, Walmart has become the whirling dervish of offline/online shopping.
    — Aaron Pressman, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Back on electric guitar, Beck spun a whirling dervish in front of Outwater, spitting in rapid fire fashion later.
    — Jim Ryan, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Not far behind is the pulpit dervish Clara Walker, whose exhortative way with a tune doubles as furnace and fan.
    — New York Times, 24 June 2021

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