How to Use leitmotif in a Sentence

leitmotif

noun
  • Stuff like leitmotifs, or the way that certain set pieces feel like arias.
    — Simon Abrams, Esquire, 8 June 2016
  • Friends continues to be a leitmotif, in fact.
    — Luisa Zargani, Footwear News, 16 Dec. 2025
  • The film has this leitmotif of inyeon, how people are fated to connect.
    — Jenelle Riley, Variety, 8 Jan. 2024
  • Googly eyes are a central leitmotif of the film, for unknown reasons.
    — Michael O'Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News, 7 Apr. 2022
  • All over a tuna salad which keeps reappearing as a leitmotif.
    — Roy Trakin, Variety, 11 June 2022
  • Other times, the first four notes are used in a leitmotif, especially when the ghosts are doing creepy things.
    — Jazz Tangcay, Variety, 28 July 2023
  • Those noises are starting to turn up as audio leitmotifs in horror movies, for chrissakes.
    — Rob Beschizza, WIRED, 24 Jan. 2007
  • Celebrations were the leitmotif of this phase of our friendship.
    — Jessica B. Harris, Southern Living, 21 May 2020
  • As his range of roles broaden, Cassel has not turned his back on the tough-guy roles that have been a leitmotif through his career.
    — Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 25 Oct. 2024
  • The casual intrusion of food is a constant leitmotif of the books.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2022
  • One leitmotif of the film is contemporary dance, which offers the daughter a form of release.
    — John Hopewell, Variety, 3 Nov. 2024
  • The panther has been Cartier’s leitmotif for more than a century.
    — Nancy Hass, New York Times, 26 Aug. 2020
  • His boys are coy, knowing, and lithe; the male odalisque, in a state of opulent undress, is a favorite leitmotif.
    — Christopher Alessandrini, The New York Review of Books, 18 May 2019
  • In the self-portrait, a windmill—a leitmotif in most of Wood’s landscapes—looms behind him against a yellow sky.
    — Steven Strogatz, The New Yorker, 5 Mar. 2018
  • Repetition, both of words and of leitmotifs, is a core aspect of Perverts.
    — James Factora, Them, 9 Jan. 2025
  • The birds aren’t quite a leitmotif but rather a signpost of inaccessible feelings.
    — E. Tammy Kim, New Yorker, 17 Dec. 2025
  • But the tower hearkens back to an important leitmotif of Arthur’s story.
    — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 18 May 2017
  • Among designers, for whom a strong, fashion-loving mother is a leitmotif, leopard print has been a constant for decades.
    — Nancy MacDonell, WSJ, 18 Sep. 2018
  • The same gesture was adopted after the putsch in Myanmar, the leitmotif of a protest movement millions strong.
    — New York Times, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Miketta said that has been a leitmotif of the winter, a function of geography and how the storms have been positioned.
    — Anthony R. Wood, Philly.com, 21 Mar. 2018
  • Not exactly leitmotifs, but yes, as each person sings, the music tends to reflect their character.
    — Deborah Unger, Scientific American, 5 Nov. 2025
  • The funny way things work out is something of a leitmotif for the down-on-its luck newest New Pornographers record.
    — Elizabeth Nelson, Pitchfork, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Animal print was another major theme in our fall shoe trend report—a leitmotif seen here in the form of punchy leopard spots and zebra stripes.
    — Laura Jackson, Vogue, 7 Oct. 2024
  • His signature games are a master class in how to shift registers, how to strategize, how to create forms and patterns and leitmotifs.
    — Will Harrison, New York Times, 11 July 2023
  • The dancing bears therefore serve as an allegorical leitmotif in the book’s second half.
    — Timothy Garton Ash, Foreign Affairs, 11 Dec. 2018
  • Its leitmotif sticks, doggedly, to the idea of transmutable, unholy fears, and sins of the fathers, transmitted like a virus down the family line.
    — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 15 Jan. 2025
  • For Sedaris a snapping turtle with a partly missing foot and a tumor on its head becomes an unlikely leitmotif.
    — Alan Cumming, New York Times, 25 May 2018
  • The move fits with his Wagnerian influences, prizing leitmotif on top of the grand scope.
    — Ben Huberman, Longreads, 31 Oct. 2017
  • That has not stopped that word — corrupt — from providing something of a leitmotif for this Premier League season.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 1 Mar. 2024
  • Across the nine stories, in the leitmotif department, trepidations about turning 50 would get the nod.
    — Elinor Lipman, New York Times, 2 June 2017

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