How to Use imitative in a Sentence

imitative

adjective
  • The architecture is imitative of a Japanese temple.
  • The word was likely imitative of the deep humming sound male bees make.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 25 May 2025
  • It may be borrowed or coined, named after a person, inspired by a place or imitative of a sound.
    — Literary Hub, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal.
    — Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, 8 June 2022
  • So central to our culture and so often mocked — made the emblem of television at its least imaginative and most imitative, at its tritest and tiredest.
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr. 2021
  • The imitative relationship between life and art is at the core of Small’s recovery, though in a more literal way.
    — Washington Post, 8 Apr. 2022
  • Burroughs was interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all.
    — William Gibson, WIRED, 1 July 2005
  • Her presence is a series of postures and imitative voice techniques that serve only to further etch the image of junkie mess into this portrait of a great artist who changed an art form.
    — Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 22 Feb. 2021
  • Her singing sounds very much like Holiday but retains its own personality, rather than feeling imitative.
    — Chris Hewitt, Star Tribune, 25 Feb. 2021
  • The Emory oak restoration imitative to preserve groves in the region recently marked its fifth anniversary, Peacey said.
    — The Arizona Republic, 29 Feb. 2024
  • The light bulb, after all, is a supreme specimen of imitative technology, a mechanized candle.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2023
  • Aziz rolled out a summer crime imitative in 2021, shortly after his tenure began.
    — Jasmine Hilton, Washington Post, 30 July 2024
  • The social self is avoidance-based, conforming, imitative, predictable, planned, and hardworking.
    — Ellen Choi, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2025
  • So too did the artists bring out the Mendelssohnian grace of the allegro molto from Opus 8, the imitative figures bouncing from one instrument to the next.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 28 Feb. 2018
  • The crowded true-crime space tends to be an imitative one—a quality that can work in victims’ favor, as with this docuseries, which builds on the empathy-building of its predecessors.
    — Inkoo Kang, The New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2023
  • Its roots are purely imitative, echoing the sound itself rather than deriving from a concrete Indo-European root.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 7 Sep. 2025
  • An implication of this broader dynamic might be that environments which change more will have less pressure to enforce imitative conformity.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 21 June 2011
  • The third movement’s opening is announced by Minimalist harp figures and muted tones — suggestive of jazz, but not imitative — in the brasses.
    — Seth Colter Walls, New York Times, 10 June 2018
  • Layoffs are the result of imitative behavior and are not particularly evidence-based.
    — Brigid Kennedy, The Week, 17 Feb. 2023
  • The Beastie Boys are a partly imitative act, and that’s what feels both so genius and so white about them—a combination of total confidence and ironic distance.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 24 Apr. 2020
  • Mae’s life aligns with the repetitive, imitative work of Warhol, showing us that the story of growing into an adult — becoming a woman — is a story of aesthetic creation.
    — Bekah Waalkes, Washington Post, 10 July 2023
  • Tesfaye and Ortega model two opposing modes of imitative, hollow performance, like a bad actor’s varying notions of good acting.
    — Charles Bramesco, IndieWire, 15 May 2025
  • Some studied themselves in the wall-to-wall mirrors; others fixed their gaze on Jones, whose eyes moved from body to body as the dancers executed an arm-swinging gesture imitative of immature gawkiness.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2019
  • Late Mozart reveals Bach’s influence, and the brief but vital episodes of imitative counterpoint in the first movement were rendered with clarity and momentum.
    — Lukas Schulze, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 June 2022
  • Since then, whenever new tools to crank out communications have become available, somebody has flooded the zone with the fastest, most imitative material that could garner attention.
    — Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American, 8 Nov. 2025
  • That indifference comes in different shades -- genuine, imitative or self-cultivated.
    — Andrei Kolesnikov, CNN, 21 Sep. 2022
  • He was known for designing houses for prominent clients that were both elaborate and understated and evocative of older structures without being directly imitative of them.
    — Paul Goldberger, New York Times, 10 May 2020
  • Nautilus is bold in its changes to Captain Nemo’s story — new monsters, new villains — but imitative to other genre series in execution, and the vibe is a little didactic.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 25 June 2025
  • Denney then chose Stop Predatory Gambling Idaho to argue against the instant racing imitative.
    — Kimberlee Kruesi, The Seattle Times, 24 July 2018
  • The consequences for Black communities of this imitative gesture were devastating.
    — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 2 Mar. 2021

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