How to Use freak show in a Sentence

freak show

noun
  • This many people want to see a freak show.
    — David Remnick, New Yorker, 22 May 2026
  • Pick your poison—a cult, a coven, a murder house, a freak show?
    — Lauren Chval, RedEye Chicago, 30 Oct. 2017
  • Well, now even a hater like me has a reason to watch the coming freak show.
    — Frederick Dreier, Outside, 4 Mar. 2026
  • The usual parking lot behind the main bar is closed for the freak show.
    — Ana Gutierrez, Austin American-Statesman, 24 Oct. 2024
  • His era was an unprecedented freak show for the 450-foot home run.
    — Tom Krasovic, sandiegouniontribune.com, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Indeed, Ballengée takes many steps to ensure that his project doesn’t amount to some kind of frog freak show.
    — Kyle Hill, Discover Magazine, 8 Apr. 2014
  • Rick and Cliff have a front-row seat to the freak show that twisted the hippie ethos into a call for blood.
    — Laura Demarco, cleveland.com, 24 July 2019
  • What all of these dogs share—besides their Great Dane roots—is that they’re never framed as freak shows.
    — Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 6 Dec. 2025
  • The hawker is always full of pompous boasts — lies — and the freak show behind him is sad and disappointing.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 28 Jan. 2018
  • Conventions have always been these bizarre combinations of state fair, freak show, and prom.
    — The Atlantic, 21 Aug. 2020
  • At the wheel of this desert-racing, quasi-retro freak show is its proud papa, Jim Glickenhaus.
    — Daniel Pund, Car and Driver, 15 Mar. 2020
  • To put it politely, American food television is a freak show.
    — John Anderson, WSJ, 13 July 2017
  • The Wasilla grower is no stranger to the freak show that rolls out every year at the fair’s vegetable competitions.
    — Zaz Hollander, Anchorage Daily News, 31 May 2020
  • Alabama’s freak show of an offense has the potential to be the best in the history of college football.
    — Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 27 Aug. 2019
  • All sporting events are, fundamentally, freak shows.
    — Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic, 25 May 2026
  • The thrill never dies Finding actors who could sing opera tinged with rock and fill out a freak show was an especially fun nightmare.
    — Andrea Simakis, cleveland.com, 7 Jan. 2018
  • Hell’s carnival barker leads visitors through a freak show with fire breathers, a knife thrower and the spawn of Satan himself.
    — Hannah Kirby, Journal Sentinel, 18 Oct. 2024
  • Furthermore, the fourth season describes an American freak show and its struggle for survival.
    — Toby Grey, BGR, 16 Sep. 2022
  • Based on a true story, the play is about a Mexican woman with excessive body hair and enlarged facial features who was sold to a freak show.
    — Shannon Sutlief, Dallas News, 30 July 2020
  • Now) Step right up for a pretty lip balm with a buildable brick-red tint in packaging that channels the old-timey freak shows of Coney Island.
    — Meirav Devash, Allure, 6 Oct. 2017
  • Conservatives who are real conservatives don’t ape the social-justice left and make politics a daily freak show.
    — Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 14 Dec. 2017
  • The premise of freak show, that the fringe operated outside the normal workings of American politics, has decayed over the years.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 23 Feb. 2018
  • In short, Minaya's tenure was very on brand given the Mets' perpetual status as one of baseball's more eccentric freak shows.
    — Jon Tayler, SI.com, 22 Dec. 2017
  • Around a corner, a visitor comes face-to-face with artifacts from a freak show that was part of the Sells-Floto Circus a century ago.
    — Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Mar. 2018
  • While some members of the disability community see the Mütter as an offensive freak show, others see it as a place where people can learn about their rare conditions.
    — Maura Judkis, Washington Post, 27 July 2023
  • No one reading this publication is interested in the incredibly ugly, vile and vapid Kardashian pig turd and her circus freak show life.
    — Nina Braca, Billboard, 5 Jan. 2018
  • But Reeves’ movie, tilting into emo freak show with Robert Pattinson leading an impeccable cast, is so masterfully made.
    — Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Dec. 2022
  • That was the boy’s father, the monster of this midway, the snarling, glowering freak show who found some of his most honorable work at a traveling carnival in the Midwest, taking on all comers.
    — Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star, 19 Oct. 2017
  • His work can sometimes seem like a bit of an architectural freak show, worthy of an HGTV series more than a museum exhibition.
    — Edward Keegan, Chicago Tribune, 11 Jan. 2026
  • As Huang reveals, the twins were much more than a freak show spectacle — strivers, showmen and slaveholders who settled in rural North Carolina, country squires who loved to hunt and fish.
    — Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 May 2018

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