How to Use fictive in a Sentence

fictive

adjective
  • There’s no part of our lives that is exempt from this kind of fictive world-making.
    — Sean Illing, Vox, 4 Nov. 2018
  • Kentucky will now allow the courts the leeway to place these children with fictive kin.
    — Matt Bevin, Cincinnati.com, 16 May 2017
  • Sometimes the leads barely seem to be in the same movie, let alone the same fictive family.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 17 Mar. 2022
  • Real and fictive kinship was central to this form of state building.
    — Sean T. Byrnes, The New Republic, 7 Feb. 2023
  • This is not so much an answer as a finger-fly-up-from-the-font sprinkle of the fictive water.
    — Seamus Heaney, Harper's Magazine, 2 June 2024
  • This is not so much an answer as a finger-fly-up-from-the-font sprinkle of the fictive water.
    — Seamus Heaney, Harper's Magazine, 2 June 2024
  • Then there are the books that are fictive, existing only within other books.
    — Ella Feldman, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Dec. 2024
  • The Imus show was a way to listen in on the chatter at a fictive clubhouse of the rich and influential.
    — Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 27 Dec. 2019
  • Yet there is a still deeper bond that keeps this unhappy couple — and other fictive pairs much like them — together.
    — Fred Schruers, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2022
  • Descent-groups, whether real or fictive, loom large in the human imagination.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 27 Dec. 2011
  • The real becomes fake, the fictive authentic.
    — Elisa Wouk Almino editor, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2026
  • Yet fictive kin are supposed to have a relationship with a child, whereas Ricardo didn’t know the woman.
    — Deborah Sontag, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Often a blend of straight biography and semi-fictive point of view, Smith's dramas have been about disparate topics.
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 4 May 2017
  • Her latest, Heaux Tales, is a work of fictive brilliance and relatability.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2021
  • So being connected, even this fictive version of reading the New York Times every day, that was part of that.
    — Jason Simon, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2024
  • Contagion is a fictive work that came out almost ten years ago, but its twisty plot has definitely taken on new relevance in the wake of the coronavirus.
    — Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 29 Jan. 2020
  • By creating space for these histories in her fictive realm, Pritam strove to remember those on the periphery.
    — JSTOR Daily, 30 Oct. 2025
  • In the opera, the character singing the excerpts is Gepopo, the head of espionage for the fictive Prince Go-Go.
    — Anne Midgette, Washington Post, 4 July 2019
  • While most children are placed with relatives or fictive kin when possible, those placements will now be required in emergency situations.
    — Laura Tillman, Hartford Courant, 2 June 2026
  • An image or phrase finds you, pleases you with its wit or vividness, shoehorns open your evolving vision of the fictive world, and before that change gets fully processed, here comes another.
    — George Saunders, The New Yorker, 3 Mar. 2017
  • Tidy narratives of progress—always somewhat fictive, useful to journalists and publicists more than to consumers and artists—started to degrade.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 2 Oct. 2024
  • More obscure is the bronze historical plaque out on the salt flats dedicated to the fictive characters Eddgar and Benn.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Maud Newton has a keen appreciation for the fictive quality of stories about ancestry.
    — Maya Jasanoff, The New Yorker, 2 May 2022
  • The history bestows legitimacy, which is destabilized because so much of the history is fictive.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025
  • Events remain piercingly actual and threatening in their effects on real people, while also being duplicated in a fictive system that shows and spoofs them at the same time.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024
  • There was the coffee table scene, yes, and others, and so a fictive world began to grow out of truth, suggesting other characters, other narrative pressures, other landscapes.
    — Literary Hub, 18 June 2026
  • House Bill 256 expands rights and protections for foster parents, relative caregivers and fictive kin caregivers.
    — Christopher Harris, CBS News, 29 June 2026
  • But wait, a twist reveals Quichotte is himself a fictive creation, a character written by spy novelist Sam DuChamp.
    — Annabel Gutterman, Time, 30 Aug. 2019
  • The only thing fictive about the artist’s representation of familial incarceration would appear to be the degree of laundering.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 13 Sep. 2019
  • The fictive belief that non-nerd family and friends will flock to Facebook-like alternatives through word-of-mouth simply because Facebook holds too much power is laughable.
    — Steven Aquino, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2021

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