How to Use folk hero in a Sentence

folk hero

noun
  • This is part of why Driscoll is a folk hero.
    — New York Times, 22 Jan. 2026
  • The life of a right-wing folk hero can be a busy (and profitable) one.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 8 Sep. 2023
  • The player who becomes a folk hero.
    — Tim Rohan, NBC news, 23 Mar. 2026
  • Goetz became a folk hero in a city dealing with sky-high crime.
    — Emmanuel Felton, Rachel Hatzipanagos and Ian Duncan, The Washington Post, Anchorage Daily News, 6 May 2023
  • This frame, the folk hero sees one of his years-old projects rise to a special new peak.
    — Hugh McIntyre, Forbes.com, 20 May 2025
  • Lyons considers Kennedy both a folk hero and a friend.
    — Tom Bartlett, The Atlantic, 5 Apr. 2026
  • At the heart of that contradiction is his status as folk hero.
    — JSTOR Daily, 24 June 2024
  • In his five years locked up, his folk hero stature has only solidified.
    — Jeff Weiss, Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Bryson Barnes was already something of a Utah football folk hero.
    — Aaron Falk, The Salt Lake Tribune, 31 Aug. 2023
  • By then, Michael was already well on his way to becoming, for some, a local folk hero.
    — Molly Langmuir, Rolling Stone, 2 Feb. 2024
  • Is that simply because Beebo is something of a blue-collar folk hero?
    — Tony Maglio, HollywoodReporter, 21 Apr. 2026
  • What followed, researchers say, was a viral wave of memes that turned Mangione into a folk hero.
    — Jasmine Baehr, FOXNews.com, 7 Apr. 2025
  • Kate Middleton, regardless of her health and status, is no folk hero.
    — Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Election deniers like Tina Peters have a folk hero standing.
    — Krista Kafer, Denver Post, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Before long, the internet had turned the applicant into something of a folk hero.
    — Ashley Vega, PEOPLE, 11 Nov. 2025
  • For Mangione’s supporters, the perp walk seemed to cement his status as a modern-day folk hero.
    — Lorena O'Neil, Rolling Stone, 9 Mar. 2025
  • In the aftermath, however, Scheffler became a bit of a folk hero.
    — Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel, 21 Jan. 2025
  • The story is that a tiny country believed and a journeyman goalkeeper became a folk hero overnight.
    — Sylvana Quader Sinha, Forbes.com, 23 June 2026
  • In the case of the health care executive, the suspect charged with the killing has been celebrated as a kind of folk hero to some on the left.
    — NPR, 25 Oct. 2025
  • Kelly is a folk hero who committed murders and robberies in the late nineteenth century.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Governor Mills has become something of a resistance folk hero.
    — Emma Green, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2025
  • And at the heart of this fiction stood a character who seemed purpose-built for the moment — a few parts crypto whisperer, a few parts folk hero.
    — David Segal, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
  • And don’t forget — he was cheered as a folk hero by people on the streets of Rostov-on-Don, which may inflate his ego further.
    — NBC News, 25 June 2023
  • The fury against health insurers is so pervasive that some people view Mangione as a vigilante folk hero.
    — Maria Aspan, NPR, 13 May 2025
  • The running back has gone from cult hero to folk hero, displaying an uncanny knack for breaking tackles and for blowing people’s minds.
    — Bruce Feldman, The Athletic, 26 Dec. 2024
  • He's become enough of a folk hero that some businesses are comfortable associating with him — or at least, with the memes about him.
    — Jason Lalljee, Axios, 16 Dec. 2024
  • Overnight, the shop’s owner became a folk hero for a community that has felt beaten down and frightened amid a surge in overt antisemitism.
    — Katherine Rosman, New York Times, 21 Nov. 2023
  • The governor implored citizens not to turn Couch into a folk hero for evading capture.
    — Bill Hutchinson, ABC News, 12 Sep. 2024
  • The film brings to life the legendary story of the Swiss folk hero, offering both action and historical intrigue.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 14 Jan. 2025
  • As a cult artist of the ’90s and beyond with an Americana bent, Case kind of became a folk hero in both senses of the term.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 29 May 2023

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