How to Use hokum in a Sentence

hokum

noun
  • Everyone knows his story is pure hokum.
  • His new film is yet another piece of Hollywood hokum.
  • Let’s dive in and see what the hype, and the hokum (because there is some), is all about.
    — Big Think, 22 Aug. 2025
  • The film has a lot going for it, alongside a certain amount of hokum.
    — Michael Phillips, Detroit Free Press, 11 Jan. 2018
  • Is the hokum a bit thick even in the context of a showmanship special?
    — Jim McKairnes, USA TODAY, 14 Dec. 2022
  • When the pre-show finally began, so did the hokum that would define the rest of the night.
    — Aisha Harris, Slate Magazine, 24 Aug. 2017
  • Some of the biggest peddlers of drone hokum have been elected officials.
    — Noah Shachtman, Rolling Stone, 19 Dec. 2024
  • What finally holds all the hokum together is Pitt.
    — Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor, 25 June 2025
  • First, the name of this blog is Science, not Fiction, which means any religious hokum is right out the door.
    — Kyle Munkittrick, Discover Magazine, 29 Oct. 2010
  • His teachings were simplistic, filled with hokum, like a 15-year-old's diary entry.
    — Craig Hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, 12 Apr. 2018
  • Ultimately, what saves the movie is the cast and crew’s expert devotion to its polished, well-meaning hokum.
    — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 21 Feb. 2025
  • In past case studies of argyria, a common source is hokum therapies promoted by naturopaths and their ilk.
    — Ars Technica, 10 Jan. 2025
  • Into this world of darkness and folk hokum, in 1635, was born Francis Willughby.
    — David Holahan, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 July 2018
  • But his true gift was providing the smoke from a campfire consecrated by holistic hokum and complex sentence structure.
    — Bernie Lincicome, chicagotribune.com, 30 June 2017
  • But between all the hokum, Ackles and Padalecki's chemistry (both on and off screen) is what truly kept the engine running.
    — EW.com, 30 Sep. 2024
  • This is hokum, a product of a morbidly amusing photo taken of Dillinger while his body was on display at the Chicago morgue.
    — Neal Taflinger, Indianapolis Star, 31 Aug. 2017
  • The College Football Playoff is pure hokum, but at least its nonsense is hysterical at the same time.
    — Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 13 Nov. 2019
  • President Biden is in part a hostage to his own campaign mythology — the blue-collar guy from Scranton — and all the hokum that goes along with it.
    — The Editors, National Review, 15 June 2021
  • The result was a pageant of fight choreography, wooden romance and hypermasculine hokum that soon entered the annals of so-bad-it’s-good camp classics.
    — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2024
  • Downtrodden Democrats will need to come to grips with the reality that vast swaths of the country like or, at least, accept the hokum and hatred that Trump has been peddling.
    — Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 3 Nov. 2020
  • The Tribune eventually admitted in print that its story was intentional hokum.
    — Marianne Mather, Chicago Tribune, 9 Jan. 2025
  • Greekman’s feels subtly evocative without any hokum and serves uplifting food that meshes with the California growing seasons.
    — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 4 Sep. 2021
  • Otherwise, a spectacle that’s supposed to be an ode to the power of Hollywood hokum simply becomes the minor-key embodiment of it.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 11 Oct. 2025
  • Trying this out is part of coffee testing's scientific method, but the insistence on 175 degrees also read like marketing hokum.
    — Joe Ray, WIRED, 17 Dec. 2019
  • Those final 30 or so seconds do a lot of work to cover up what is otherwise a mostly engaging piece of hokum, a grim kidnapping tale that makes a silly hash of psychology.
    — Richard Lawson, HWD, 19 Jan. 2017
  • Yet the American space-industrial complex is sustained by Hollywood hokum.
    — David Beers, The New Republic, 7 Dec. 2020
  • Set in the art world of the early 20th century, the episode neatly epitomizes the way this show dresses up grotesque supernatural hokum in period couture.
    — A.a. Dowd, Chron, 26 Oct. 2022
  • The story of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball in Cooperstown has long been dismissed as hokum.
    — Jared Diamond, WSJ, 24 June 2019
  • This business of saving for future generations is hokum and has become a platitudinous, self-righteous argument legislators use to further their own agendas.
    — Alaska Dispatch News, 29 June 2017
  • There are definitely laughs in Maddie’s Secret, but the point of the movie is almost to get beyond them, to the place where naive hokum could yield moments of inexplicable resonance.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 19 June 2026

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