How to Use idiomatic in a Sentence

idiomatic

adjective
  • Grieve wanted to make Proust more idiomatic and sound up-to-date.
    — Literary Hub, 7 Oct. 2025
  • What matters is that they be kept inside recognizably idiomatic speech.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 23 May 2022
  • The dancing and the chorus work were first-rate; James Lowe was the idiomatic conductor.
    — Heidi Waleson, WSJ, 16 Aug. 2017
  • Those who speak both say Cantonese is more colorful and idiomatic than Mandarin, with more cursing.
    — Anh Dostaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2022
  • Those who speak both say Cantonese is more colorful and idiomatic than Mandarin, with more cursing.
    — Tribune News Service, oregonlive, 23 Apr. 2022
  • What resonates is the multitude of idiomatic expressions rather than a single radical shock or reset to the system.
    — Amy Verner, Vogue, 28 Oct. 2021
  • Pevear and Volokhonsky take strange pains to avoid idiomatic language, giving the prose an awkward formality.
    — New York Times, 14 Apr. 2020
  • To be sure, Alter’s choices are reasonable ones, and each does capture the sense of the original in idiomatic English.
    — Sam Bray, Washington Post, 10 July 2017
  • With conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya firmly in control, the orchestra was much more lively and idiomatic than the staging.
    — Heidi Waleson, WSJ, 29 May 2018
  • Kennedy sprinkles in more idiomatic vocabulary – geg, neb, snatter, wheeker, pokes, marleys – to make her characters’ exchanges ring true.
    — Malcolm Forbes, Washington Post, 28 Oct. 2022
  • The translations look good – fluent, idiomatic, convincing.
    — Wyles Daniel, USA Today, 15 Apr. 2026
  • Performances are assured and idiomatic throughout the collection.
    — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 22 Apr. 2020
  • On cross-examination, Unsworth said his jab at Musk was just an idiomatic expression and not meant to be taken literally.
    — CBS News, 5 Dec. 2019
  • What mattered was the freshness of the programming and the spark of the performances—above all, the sly, idiomatic singing of the soprano Melissa Wimbish.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 19 Mar. 2026
  • The chorus sang forcefully from the pit, and the orchestra was idiomatic under the skillful leadership of Harry Bicket.
    — Heidi Waleson, WSJ, 3 Oct. 2017
  • Alsop’s Verdi was overcharged and not altogether idiomatic, lacking Verdian flow in the interest of trying to land points at big moments.
    — Washington Post, 30 Sep. 2019
  • Payare led the orchestra in an idiomatic performance for this concerto’s American premiere.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Feb. 2022
  • These readable, idiomatic translations have all the agile swiftness and understated poignancy that parallel suggests.
    — Boyd Tonkin, WSJ, 22 Oct. 2021
  • Lopez-Cobos' uptight accompaniment was all about keeping in step with his soloist, but that was not nearly the same thing as breathing Gershwin's music with the same idiomatic ease or flair.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 26 May 2017
  • With either or both Michael Sponseller and Valenzuela on harpsichord and/or organ, their realizations were idiomatic and clean.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Oct. 2019
  • His knack for keeping textures spotless, rhythms sharply etched, yielded an idiomatic rendition of Bartok’s mid-20th-century take on the baroque concerto grosso.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 3 Nov. 2017
  • Honeck paced the scherzo as moderately as Mahler specified in the score, bringing a truly idiomatic grace to those lilting evocations of Viennese landler and waltz.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 26 Jan. 2018
  • The translations will probably come with the same occasional mishaps that Google Translate runs into—idiomatic expressions might be confounding, and some words just don’t compute.
    — Ella Riley-Adams, Vogue, 4 Oct. 2017
  • Textual analysis came naturally to the industry’s sleuths, some of whom claimed to detect a Germanic cadence in the thief’s writing or an idiomatic French syntax.
    — Reeves Wiedeman, Vulture, 17 Aug. 2021
  • Textual analysis came naturally to the industry’s sleuths, some of whom claimed to detect a Germanic cadence in the thief’s writing or an idiomatic French syntax.
    — Vulture, 6 Jan. 2022
  • With ordinary emotion sung in idiomatic English having been reclaimed by the singer-songwriters, theatrical music could borrow rock style but move backward in form, toward operetta and melodrama.
    — Steven Strogatz, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2017
  • Similarly, the Persian phrases, usually idiomatic ones, that pepper the dialogue are translated for the reader throughout the book — often, puzzlingly, by the person who just spoke them.
    — Rebecca Makkai, New York Times, 14 Apr. 2020
  • The traditional idiomatic wisdom that ‘muchas manos en la olla echan el guiso a perder’ - analogized to ‘too many cooks spoiling the broth’ – has been abandoned in favor of more collaborative and integrated models of healthcare delivery.
    — David Walcott, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2021
  • So did the idiomatic work of conductor Scott Speck and the Chicago Philharmonic, which elegantly handled intricate interchanges with the jazz trio.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Conductor Chen led the Sinfonietta’s wind quintet in an idiomatic reading that captured the rhythmic charm and lyric elegance of Piazzolla’s original.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 18 Oct. 2020

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