How to Use essayistic in a Sentence

essayistic

adjective
  • The prose itself in Wolfish is brisk and essayistic, and makes for a compelling read.
    — Colin Dickey, The New Republic, 31 Mar. 2023
  • There are moments in this novel that hint at Iweala’s freer, more essayistic voice.
    — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2018
  • Even though the book breaks narrative format for essayistic asides.
    — Ew Staff, EW.com, 23 Sep. 2020
  • His fifth book is part memoir, part journalism and part essayistic exploration of the sport.
    — Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, 8 May 2023
  • Novak’s essayistic style leaves room for the kind of ambivalent truths that never resolve into a call to action.
    — New York Times, 12 Oct. 2021
  • But there’s an essayistic quality to this story, which lobs around these questions of storytelling.
    — Cressida Leyshon, The New Yorker, 4 July 2022
  • The film is a pulsing, essayistic docu-fiction piece that defies categorization.
    — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 27 Jan. 2025
  • That said, this essayistic approach frees up Fitzgerald to tell long stories, unhampered by the demands of chronology.
    — Stuart Miller, BostonGlobe.com, 7 July 2022
  • It’s deeply reported and essayistic, a nearly inescapable combination when the reporter in question is also an eyewitness.
    — Longreads, 20 Dec. 2022
  • The novel succeeds in interweaving an essayistic impulse with the vulnerabilities attendant on any dark night of the soul.
    — The New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2023
  • Motherhood reads much more like a journal, in which mundane events—a conversation, an outing, an argument—mingle with essayistic explorations.
    — Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic, 13 May 2018
  • Holleran’s novels have become increasingly essayistic over time.
    — Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022
  • Major Labels is an essayistic medley rather than a straight chronological history, with a generous helping of memoir included along the way.
    — Jack Hamilton, The Atlantic, 6 Oct. 2021
  • That acceptance becomes a cause for celebration, a painful reckoning, and a real meditation on what literary and literal gumption can create and sustain in essayistic forms.
    — Longreads, 21 Dec. 2017
  • In these works, the director foregrounded an essayistic narrative, using words to guide viewers through the brutality of Western civilization.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Much of Unread rolls out in gentle fashion — Stedman’s narration is writerly, essayistic — guiding listeners through the journey and its many moving parts with an elegiac thoughtfulness.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 14 July 2021
  • Polley leans into the almost surreal qualities of Toews’s novel, resisting the urge to tidy up the meandering, essayistic nature of these conversations.
    — Jennifer Wilson, The New Republic, 19 Dec. 2022
  • In it, the stand-up comedian and recent Emmy winner presents essayistic histories of the subcultures that shaped him, drawing parallels, both said and unsaid, between six seemingly disparate communities.
    — Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 30 Jan. 2024
  • Gathering information from online postings by victims and soliciting covert filming by her collaborators in China, Wang puts together an essayistic and emotional film that focuses on the grief of survivors and the trauma of caregivers.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 13 May 2021

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