How to Use koan in a Sentence

koan

noun
  • This could have been a Zen koan, in different times.
    — Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 18 Nov. 2025
  • Like so many other questions in this book, this one is posed as a head-scratching koan.
    — Benjamin Moser, New York Times, 28 June 2018
  • The simple question is like a Zen koan that can get the rusty gears in your head to start turning.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2024
  • But Ackman’s koan is also correct in a more absurdist way.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 20 June 2026
  • But there is enough evidence to suggest this isn’t a koan—an unanswerable Zen riddle.
    — Nick Ravo, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
  • No, that’s not a Zen Buddhist koan designed to perplex music fans and philosophers alike.
    — George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 July 2022
  • Officials and researchers alike were speaking in paradoxes akin to Zen koans.
    — Kitty Morgan, SFChronicle.com, 19 Apr. 2020
  • Olin and her father speak in poems and whatever the Norwegian equivalent of a zen koan is.
    — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Nov. 2023
  • That could be a Zen koan about the human condition or just a tidy summary of how the sad-sack characters in his songs view the world.
    — Chris Stanton, Vulture, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Andre’s self-deprecating asides have the wisdom of Buddhist koans.
    — Patty Rhule, USA TODAY, 6 Feb. 2018
  • Consider, for example, the purpose of the koan exercises.
    — Literary Hub, 18 Aug. 2025
  • But insights can also be found in the very act of solving the puzzle itself, just as illumination may come from contemplating a Zen koan.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 Feb. 2021
  • What was clear is that Uniqlo conceives of itself as a distribution system for utopian values, replete with mantras and koans, as much as a clothing company.
    — Lauren Collins, New Yorker, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The morbidly funny moment suggests that the assassin doesn’t believe a single koan he’s been dropping and actually takes immense pleasure in his work.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Also judging by the trailer, no characters are wearing conceptual outfits inspired by the unknowable truth of Zen koans.
    — Steff Yotka, Vogue, 22 Apr. 2018
  • The correct response cannot be grasped, only meditated upon in the way of a koan used to train Zen Buddhist monks and force them into enlightenment.
    — Literary Hub, 11 June 2026
  • Yes, there are 100 grandiose, koan-laden blurbs about the year's very important newsmakers, but also, each one is written by another one of the year's very important newsmakers.
    — Jay Willis, GQ, 19 Apr. 2018
  • For market watchers and finance industry savants, Greenspan was a human koan upon which they were expected to puzzle out their own economic enlightenment.
    — Elizabeth Spiers, The New Republic, 24 July 2019
  • It’s migrated over the past five decades from retreat centers to protest placards to TED Talk stages to your aunt’s Facebook page, becoming a kind of moral koan.
    — Literary Hub, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Physicist Aguirre borrows from the Zen Buddhist tradition of koans, or contemplative riddles, to present some of his field’s most esoteric concepts.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 7 May 2019
  • There is plenty of time to ponder koans these days at the animal park, where the coronavirus pandemic has left the sea lions, and the rest of its roughly 6,000 creatures, without an audience.
    — New York Times, 3 Apr. 2020
  • Her Comme des Garçons shows became Zen koans—assemblages of bulbous shapes meant to challenge our preconceptions about garments, fashion, the establishment.
    — Steff Yotka, Vogue, 5 Oct. 2018
  • In the process, antidisestablishmentarianism became the longest non-technical word in the English language—and a nebulous koan with which to shake a fist against the Man.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 22 May 2017

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