How to Use moralistic in a Sentence

moralistic

adjective
  • While a moralistic speech won't convince kids not to try drugs, a story about people affected by drugs might.
  • But the moralistic sneer didn’t take long to enter the postgame analysis.
    — Zak Garner-Purkis, Forbes, 23 Mar. 2025
  • There will be no moralistic preaching here against sports wagering.
    — Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 Aug. 2021
  • The film gets into some moralistic hand-wringing over the fact that her death should not be blamed on her promiscuity.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 4 May 2023
  • The show’s tricky tonal blend—violent, but not nihilistic; moral, but not moralistic—was hard to nail.
    — Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, 13 June 2022
  • And — even more intensely — the show struck me as intensely moralistic.
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 8 Sep. 2017
  • What James does propose is that some of our best terms have swollen in their metaphorical meaning and moralistic charge.
    — Ian Beacock, The New Republic, 22 Feb. 2022
  • And the language in the official recall petition strikes a moralistic tone.
    — Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr. 2024
  • In the final episode, Ritchie’s moralistic logic of blame isn’t refuted but turned toward a new target.
    — Brian Mullin, Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2021
  • The press has become more moralistic than in previous decades, and social media is a jittery engine for outrage.
    — Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 5 Feb. 2020
  • What matters is a heavy focus on aesthetic and moralistic perfection.
    — Olivia Crandall, Vulture, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Along the way, and not without humor, Joy learns to discard her moralistic assumptions about Jane’s clients.
    — Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Jan. 2022
  • But Roth was too moralistic, too observant at the high altar of modernism, too prissy to get into the funk and gunk of true swingdom.
    — James Wolcott, Vanities, 24 May 2018
  • Joe Biden, like many (probably most) Democrats, often speaks about the economy in moralistic terms.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 19 Apr. 2022
  • The moralistic naysayers among us were all too quick to point out that Chastain and Isaac are both married, and not to each other, but guess what, haters?
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 7 Sep. 2021
  • The Plain women writers of today are not content to churn out the same old evangelizing, moralistic stories.
    — Kelsey Osgood, The Atlantic, 28 June 2022
  • Moral without being moralistic, Goodman suggests gaming is not the answer.
    — Philly.com, 25 June 2017
  • Visible displays of sustainability — and the moralistic high horse that comes with them — has become yet a status symbol.
    — Sydney Clarke, refinery29.com, 22 Apr. 2021
  • Prudes are going to be prudish, so no point in trying to appease them in a show that’s all about the havoc that’s wrought when human biology is denied by moralistic zealots.
    — Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 2023
  • In the hands of a less capable performer, or a performer who laughs less readily, these demurrals might have come off as disingenuous or moralistic.
    — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2022
  • To rebuild a consensus, politicians must thus appeal to these swing voters by eschewing moralistic and globalist rhetoric.
    — Foreign Affairs, 16 Dec. 2025
  • There’s simplistic storytelling, there’s moralistic storytelling, there’s storytelling where anybody with a white hat is good and anybody with a black hat is bad.
    — NBC News, 4 Apr. 2021
  • Navy excels at untangling human emotions and picking through them without being didactic or moralistic.
    — Dash Lewis, Pitchfork, 10 June 2026
  • At the same time, who could blame him for exploiting the moralistic codes that govern so much of his daily life, and for trying to acquire a dose of respect in a society where virtue is the true coin of the realm?
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 Jan. 2022
  • The heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, is the most moralistic young person in her household (and the most ignored).
    — Emily Zarevich, JSTOR Daily, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Without being too heavy handed in any moralistic messaging, McAnuff hopes the audience sees what the intent of the work has been since the beginning.
    — Julia Jacobs, New York Times, 12 July 2023
  • How to Blow Up a Pipeline could have become a dour, moralistic exercise or a potboiler devoid of politics.
    — Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 8 Apr. 2023
  • The United States has flipped from a moralistic benefactor to a transactional predator of Kyiv’s resources.
    — Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 24 Feb. 2025
  • Good intentions — and handsome animation — aside, Forevergreen is ultimately too maudlin and moralistic to rank it much higher than this.
    — Joe Reid, Vulture, 10 Mar. 2026
  • But McCraney is a poet, not a moralistic ideologue or a political propagandist happy to play to the choir.
    — Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 26 June 2022

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