How to Use local color in a Sentence

local color

noun
  • Looking for local color is fun, but can be dangerous to your health.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Sep. 2019
  • The play hewed closely to the original script, with a few splashes of local color.
    — Chelsea Edgar, The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 2025
  • The local color varies, but the overarching themes remain the same.
    — Yascha Mounk, Foreign Affairs, 18 Aug. 2014
  • Visitors should also take time to stroll the city’s malecón, or seafront promenade, for a dash of local color.
    — Mark Rogers, USA TODAY, 4 Dec. 2019
  • The Welcome to Venice graffiti is a nice splash of local color.
    — Andy Newman, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2017
  • Joseph wanted this home in Livingston Manor to feel steeped in the hamlet's local color.
    — Raina Kattelson, Better Homes & Gardens, 15 Oct. 2021
  • Go readers want to hear—some local color to accentuate the foreignness.
    — Jennifer Wilson, The Atlantic, 19 Apr. 2022
  • Watching the film is such an intense experience that most of its flaws fall away and its red herrings serve only to enhance the local color.
    — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 20 May 2021
  • Taken together, the aim is to combine excellence and local color.
    — Laurie Werner, Forbes, 18 June 2021
  • Authorities hope Cossacks will protect fans while adding local color.
    — Washington Post, 8 June 2018
  • Cuba was trending, and all kinds of international outlets wanted us for local color.
    — Abraham Jiménez Enoa, The Dial, 19 May 2026
  • That sets him apart, at least, from the customary authors of similar screeds, visitors from outside parachuting in for a week or two to sponge up local color for their takes.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 23 July 2021
  • Not much local color there, but travelers themselves often fascinated me.
    — New York Times, 27 June 2018
  • But what begins as a local color documentary switches gears midway through and becomes a process documentary.
    — Jeb Lund, The New Republic, 26 Oct. 2020
  • Explore the beautiful villages of Apeiranthos and Halki and enjoy the local color of these villages.
    — Petros G. Zissimos, Travel + Leisure, 6 Nov. 2020
  • There are much more interesting situations that come to light, both dramatic and comical, described with local color.
    — Arkansas Online, 26 Apr. 2025
  • Both the leading man’s charisma and the setting’s local color shine through immediately, gifting us with a winning hero and an upbeat, lively journey.
    — Courtney Howard, Variety, 30 Oct. 2025
  • The American might have carried more prestige, but the local color writers were just as widely read, and their work stands as the postwar era’s most important form of short fiction.
    — Michael Gorra, The New York Review of Books, 23 July 2020
  • Fans don’t need their local color commentators to be objective or analytical.
    — Julia Poe, Chicago Tribune, 11 June 2026
  • It’s also strongly rooted in Tulsa, with local color to spare, and maintains an oddball sense of humor, even in perilous situations.
    — Dave Nemetz, TVLine, 23 Sep. 2025
  • My first regular byline was on the Public Eye column, a daily round-up of entertainment news and gossip, along with bits of local color.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Nov. 2022
  • Williams renders local color and characters with consummate craft, embroidering the full range of village life with flashes of hilarity.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Jan. 2021
  • Twitter feed took a stab at local color and hipness by mentioning Karl the Fog, some San Franciscans were deeply offended.
    — Scott Ostler, SFChronicle.com, 8 Aug. 2020
  • There are boys, men, grandparents, and local color, but Lorelei and Rory Gilmore are the twin suns of this solar system—and their love, humor, and rat-a-tat dialogue delight.
    — John Ortved, Vogue, 29 June 2024
  • The concept is not unlike the literary trope of regionalism or local color genre—telling the same core story, just tailoring the language and presentation for new audiences and global regions.
    — Alexandra Harrell, Sourcing Journal, 25 Nov. 2025
  • And if Kaya‘s Michelin Green Star doesn’t tell you that, the local color on the plates at this James Beard Award finalist certainly will.
    — Amy Drew Thompson, The Orlando Sentinel, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Let’s hope so, because for anyone who likes mysteries with good plotting and characterization, vivid local color, and sparkling language, the Montalbano series is azackly right.
    — Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post, 12 Sep. 2019
  • There are a handful of digressions in the category of local color, such as a francophone farmer who cooks haute cuisine and a bounty hunter nicknamed Preacher, who adorns his violent assaults with Bible verses.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 20 May 2025
  • Readers familiar with with the local color in each novel have already seen fictional characters visit Nantucket beaches, restaurants, shops, and beyond, and this guidebook is inspired by the setting in each book.
    — Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2025
  • Both exhibitions emphasize van Gogh as a lone, tortured genius rather than a figure of history, and both imply through their editing and exposition that his thick outlines and non-local color were a spontaneous outpouring of his soul.
    — Jason Farago, New York Times, 9 June 2021

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