How to Use doyen in a Sentence

doyen

noun
  • He is considered the doyen of political journalists.
  • This is Eisenberg, after all, the doyen of the flinch and the frown.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 12 July 2019
  • But there’s a reason Bob Cousy, the doyen of point guards, doubted him.
    Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 21 June 2022
  • Trump and Leo built an unlikely alliance that would benefit both the politician and the legal doyen.
    Tessa Berenson, Time, 8 Feb. 2018
  • One of them hurled a fish at the audience—Suzy Menkes, then the doyen of The Times, caught it in her lap.
    Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 16 Apr. 2024
  • India has also been courting the doyens of Taiwanese industry.
    Harsh V. Pant, Foreign Affairs, 14 Nov. 2024
  • My first tax boss was Stephen Land, a doyen of the international tax bar in New York, now retired.
    Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Luckily, Duke doyen Mike Krzyzewski sees the light where some of his football counterparts don’t.
    BostonGlobe.com, 20 Oct. 2019
  • The fashion doyen returns the favor, dominating the film with his sheer force of personality.
    Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Apr. 2018
  • These are simple places, sometimes shacks, but all lively and serving great food cooked by formidable doyens, grandmothers such as Lu.
    Catherine Fairweather, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Mar. 2024
  • This one felt different, and not just because the Celtics paid tribute to the late Bill Russell and played in the dominant doyen’s honor.
    Christopher L. Gasper, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Oct. 2022
  • These are the questions that, over the past decade or so, jazz listeners have watched Salvant — now 30, and the unrivaled doyen of young jazz vocalists — work through.
    New York Times, 27 Feb. 2020
  • Olivier was a doyen of the British screen and stage, winning an Oscar and five BAFTAs.
    Max Goldbart, Deadline, 23 Dec. 2025
  • For the eternally young doyen of the Broadway musical, even revivals were an opportunity for trying something new.
    Los Angeles Times, 26 Nov. 2021
  • Ameen Sayani, the doyen of Indian radio, died on Tuesday in Mumbai following a heart attack.
    Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 21 Feb. 2024
  • Biden’s fundraiser, hosted by fashion journalism doyen Wintour, cost $1,000 each for tickets.
    Max Goldbart, Deadline, 13 June 2024
  • Flash forward to 2019, and the current doyen of the family business, Ben, has made his triumphant return to the chi-chi vacation spot.
    Roxanne Adamiyatt, Town & Country, 6 May 2019
  • The doyens of the European Union are also breathing a sigh of relief after Mattarella's intervention.
    Tim Lister, CNN, 28 May 2018
  • Larijani is also close with former President Hassan Rouhani, who can be brought in from the cold as the doyen of the regime’s West-facing faction.
    Arash Azizi, The Atlantic, 1 Mar. 2026
  • Only under George Balanchine, the doyen of American ballet, did sylphlike figures become the norm.
    Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 9 June 2022
  • Only Andersson, the doyen of inaction movies, could offer beatitudes to the ineffectual and the zonked.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 30 Apr. 2021
  • Surely a follow-up story would soon appear, explaining that Cruz was not a mere coach but the doyen of the LD national circuit, and that its mores had played into his predation.
    Tess McNulty, Harper’s Magazine , 17 Aug. 2022
  • In a nation where laws permit any citizen to file lawsuits against anyone perceived of immorality or tarnishing the country’s image, the 69-year-old lawyer is the profession’s doyen.
    Washington Post, 28 Sep. 2019
  • Murray’s focus on tax measures in his quote may dampen expectations that the Labour government is about to improve the high-end TV tax credit, which industry doyens have been calling for for some time now.
    Max Goldbart, Deadline, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Sorkin, Kernen and Quick have been anchoring the show together for the last 14 years, with Kernen serving as the doyen of the group, going to back to its 1995 debut.
    Alex Weprin, HollywoodReporter, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Wolfe, who died Monday at age 88, was known as a dandified doyen of the New Journalism, a reporter who embedded with hippies and race car drivers and astronauts, and later as a grandiose novelist.
    Jeet Heer, The New Republic, 15 May 2018
  • Kositza has become the face and voice of the publishing house, reviewing books and promoting Antaios’s new releases on her YouTube channel, while Kubitschek is one of its ideological doyens.
    Sumi Somaskanda, The Atlantic, 22 June 2017
  • The doyen of Labour’s energy policy is not Clement Attlee, the prime minister who nationalised Britain’s fractured array of public and private energy suppliers.
    The Economist, 3 May 2018
  • In the face of a deficit of tens of thousands of votes in a close count following Peru’s June 6 presidential election, Keiko Fujimori, the 46-year-old doyen of a right-wing political dynasty, declined to concede.
    BostonGlobe.com, 16 June 2021
  • In the final pages of issue number two, legendary Englishman Nicky Haslam, a doyen of the interiors world, shares his ultimate party etiquette, honed over a lifetime of attending the most fabulous parties ever thrown discreetly behind closed doors.
    Freya Drohan, Vogue, 7 Oct. 2024

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