How to Use moralism in a Sentence

moralism

noun
  • The candidate's campaign was doomed by an incessant moralism that came across as condescension.
  • No doubt, Burns would have found the high-toned moralism of our age amusing.
    — Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 25 Jan. 2021
  • This should not be read, however, as a tiresome kind of kumbaya moralism.
    — Cameron Hilditch, National Review, 14 Aug. 2020
  • The fevered moralism of that age seems a long way from the paralyzing cynicism of ours.
    — The Atlantic, 4 Nov. 2022
  • What emerged instead was a descent from morality to moralism.
    — Brian Stewart, National Review, 5 Oct. 2019
  • Beinart is hardly alone in allowing moralism to muddy his thinking about the world.
    — Damon Linker, TheWeek, 9 Dec. 2020
  • The pastoral moralism that he was often accused of peddling was actually a clever sleight of hand.
    — Tyler Malone, latimes.com, 29 June 2018
  • Second, misplaced moralism can provide cover for bad policies.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2020
  • For the readers of the future, the books will always be there like sticks of dynamite, ready to blow up complacency and moralism.
    — Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic, 23 May 2018
  • But for Keynes, this attitude simply reflected smug moralism.
    — Kim Phillips-Fein, The New Republic, 9 June 2020
  • But George Eliot was intensely sincere in both her agnosticism and her moralism.
    — James Wood, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
  • American culture, after all, tends to treat sleep less as a matter of morality than as an outlet for haphazard moralism.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 12 Oct. 2023
  • In a 2010 study , Markus Giesler and colleagues extended this idea of consumer moralism.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 15 July 2016
  • Both sisters used compelling flourishes, and an undercurrent of clear moralism, to bring history’s heroes and despots to life.
    — Devoney Looser, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Oct. 2022
  • But the risk is that this combination of exacting precision and stark moralism can be subtractive rather than additive.
    — Matthew Yglesias, Vox, 26 June 2019
  • Relative moralism is a slippery slope because there is no fundamental belief by all in something, an absolute truth.
    — Joe Kinsey Outkick, FOXNews.com, 1 June 2026
  • In this worldview, aggressive secularism and moralism go hand in hand with the reckless condemnation of whole groups and peoples.
    — Daniel J. Mahoney, National Review, 23 Sep. 2020
  • This slows growth, destroys social trust, increases judgment and moralism, and saps societal happiness.
    — Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, 24 May 2026
  • His tendency to turn every human encounter into a confrontation, a reckoning, sounds an awful lot like moralism.
    — Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker, 9 May 2022
  • That roughing in of a few sharper edges parallels the addition of Victorian moralism to the animal world.
    — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 8 Apr. 2024
  • This conceit must strain Christian charity, let alone more austere Jewish and Muslim moralism.
    — Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 28 May 2017
  • That perspective — in contrast to Drakeo’s millennial madman’s diaries — at the very least suggested a kind of moralism.
    — Will Dukes, Rolling Stone, 22 Dec. 2021
  • The fusion of imagery and moralism is so simple-minded, and so brilliant, that there is a kind of excess electrical charge, which is also true of the most effective, viral memes.
    — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 7 Feb. 2023
  • Elsewhere the book’s dialogue reminded me of the saccharine moralism found only in afterschool specials.
    — Barrett Swanson, The New Republic, 6 Aug. 2020
  • To say anything else, many feminists now argue, would be to infantilize her, to subordinate her—to the state, to moralism—rather than acknowledge her mastery of her own body.
    — S. C. Cornell, New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2026
  • The events of this episode are Greek in tragedy, biblical in moralism, Tarantino-esque in carnage, and Fessy-ian in pettiness.
    — Kyndall Cunningham, Vulture, 15 Apr. 2021
  • The Return of the Global South Realism, not moralism, drives a new critique of western power.
    — Graeme Smith, Foreign Affairs, 10 June 2024
  • Since the turn of the millennium, the prosecution of white-collar crime has plummeted—but this should not imply a surge in moralism among our leading capitalists.
    — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 23 Aug. 2021
  • King was imbued with a deep moralism, but Kennedy was ever the pragmatist, always seeking out the optimal political angle.
    — Vincent J. Cannato, WSJ, 26 July 2017
  • When motivating moralism is paired with a pragmatic understanding of the way a system works, there’s the potential for truly positive change.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 31 May 2018

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