How to Use noir in a Sentence

noir

1 of 2 noun
  • But damn it, a noir hero still cares.
    — Sarah Shachat, IndieWire, 24 Sep. 2025
  • That’s also a very good place for noir.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Yeah, there's a dark heart to it, there's a noir kind of stuff.
    — H. Alan Scott, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Oct. 2025
  • The Black Lizard is him at peak noir.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 23 Oct. 2025
  • True to noir form, it’s pumped up on twists, weirdos and bloodshed.
    — Randy Myers, The Mercury News, 31 Jan. 2024
  • This is a blend of grenache noir and syrah, aged in concrete vats for six months.
    — Dave McIntyre, Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2023
  • This is literary noir at its best.
    — John Warner, Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 2026
  • Himes’s revival in recent years has come on the strength of his noir crime fiction.
    — Adam Bradley, New York Times, 7 Mar. 2023
  • The dark streetlights on one side of the road that made the shadows look like a modern noir film?
    — Asha Dore, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2026
  • Like any good noir, the vehicle of the plot is the murders and the mystery.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 May 2022
  • The song was thrilling yet unnerving, an heir to 50 Cent’s street noir.
    — August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2023
  • Sure, it’s supposed to be pulpy noir, but that doesn’t mean things have to be this incoherent.
    — Vulture, 2 May 2022
  • The look, like previous videos Stark's team made with Kwofi, is very film-noir.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 4 June 2020
  • But, as in many a noir, the women provided much of the spectacle.
    — Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 14 July 2023
  • Of course, the cult classic and deeply noir music video also helped the band find an audience.
    — Selena Fragassi, SPIN, 28 May 2026
  • The resulting images emerge shadowy and noir-ish.
    — Sammy Loren, Los Angeles Times, 18 Mar. 2026
  • Those wishing to secure their own flour or semolina must resort to the marché noir – the black market.
    — Taylor Luck, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Sep. 2023
  • There are so many different ways to read Hitchcock's dizzying noir.
    — Wesley Stenzel, EW.com, 24 Jan. 2023
  • There are so many different ways to read Hitchcock's dizzying noir.
    — Wesley Stenzel, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Jazz trumpet struts added a cool noir quality to the soundscapes, and mandolin sprints brought a fiery flair.
    — Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Then, like a noir femme fatale, into his auto shop walked Cari, needing some help with her car.
    — Chris Vognar, Rolling Stone, 9 Feb. 2024
  • Like all great noir, Desna has to face both the mistakes of her past and come to terms with the price of chasing power.
    — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 11 Nov. 2021
  • This is outback noir — oblique, secretive and as hard-boiled as the ground is hard-baked — and Sen wears it well.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 23 Feb. 2023
  • That’s not the kind of hold that the mid-budget neo noir was depending on after a muted opening.
    — J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 6 Sep. 2025
  • These are the questions at the heart of noir, of every literature of alienation.
    — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Squirrels and ducks are occasional motifs in the comedic noir in which Gary is trapped.
    — Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Yet under all that slick, rapid-fire mayhem, there’s also a touch of the noir — call it Yule Noir.
    — Pat Padua, Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2022
  • One is filmed in black and white and shown chronologically, evoking classic noir.
    — ArsTechnica, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Benson has crafted a noir film inside the pages of a book and the cast of characters in the present and past come vividly to life.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Oct. 2019
  • To further immerse you in the noir setting, the series is being released in both black and white and color.
    — Maira Garcia, Los Angeles Times, 13 May 2026

noir

2 of 2 adjective
  • As has often been written, noir is not quite a genre, a mood or a style.
    — Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times, 19 Dec. 2021
  • Life could feel as dramatic as a noir film set all of a sudden.
    — Tarot Astrologers, chicagotribune.com, 27 Mar. 2022
  • Pinot noir and chardonnay made from grape clusters and nothing else.
    — Michael Alberty | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 25 Oct. 2021
  • Like Blaxploitation, the line as to what is and isn’t noir is blurred.
    — Odie Henderson, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Nov. 2022
  • Their neo-noir all-night trip is also full of laughs and touching moments.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 1 June 2026
  • How did noir mix and mingle with the Nineties in this narrative?
    — Brenna Ehrlich, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2021
  • Not only that, but as with noir, the mashups reverberate both ways.
    — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2022
  • During the day, the anthracite turns them a dark gray to contrast against the noir backdrop.
    — Paige Reddinger, Robb Report, 23 Mar. 2021
  • This gives the movie a vaguely noir look, which adds to its sustained mood of mild, or not-so-mild, menace.
    — Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 1 June 2022
  • The look, like previous videos Stark's team made with Kwofi, is very film-noir.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 4 June 2020
  • Elisabeth, around whom the plot revolves, has ghosts in her past (this is noir, after all).
    — David James, Anchorage Daily News, 16 Jan. 2021
  • The first Birdland was a hardcore noir night club, of a kind now mostly vanished.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 4 Mar. 2021
  • The art in turn looks realistic and grounded, albeit with a noir/thriller bent.
    — Christian Holub, EW.com, 31 Mar. 2021
  • The aesthetic is pitch-perfect for the noir-y tale Spielberg is telling.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 14 June 2022
  • The film’s attempt at neo-noir grit has the same effect as seeing private school kids flashing gang signs.
    — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 18 Mar. 2026
  • Despite the Levys’ film-noir management style, much good music was made there.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 4 Mar. 2021
  • Pinot noir vines struggling to work through rocky Peavine soil yield smaller, thicker-skinned berries.
    — Michael Alberty | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 7 Feb. 2022
  • The noir backdrop is the perfect platform for the rose gold flourishes which offer a stealth dose of flash.
    — Carol Besler, Robb Report, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Parker goes neo-noir with a side order of horror and a double helping of atmosphere.
    — Clark Collis, EW.com, 31 July 2020
  • But Hurt’s career picked up steam with 1981’s neo-noir, Body Heat.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Mar. 2022
  • See where Joel and Ethan Coen got their start in a clever riff on noir tropes — double crosses!
    — Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 3 Jan. 2025
  • All of this is surely fair game for fresh takes just as much as, say, the hospital drama, the legal thriller or the noir mystery.
    — Washington Post, 23 Dec. 2020
  • There’s so much to explore— aliens, the supernatural, horror, noir, and so on.
    — Rob Wieland, Forbes, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Cowan is aces as a doe-eyed femme fatale in a noir horror movie fueled by gonzo B-movie energy.
    — Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 2 June 2022
  • The minor chords and theatrical chorus provide the noir ambiance.
    — Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The lyrics bristle with local slang, and the music videos are bathed in the noir glow of Motor City back streets and strip malls.
    — New York Times, 14 Mar. 2022
  • The result is a true noir masterpiece in the Batman tradition.
    — Joe George, Men's Health, 2 Mar. 2022
  • Like the femme fatale portrayed in that song, or indeed, in many noir films, the Monica in this film aims to be a survivor.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Nicolas Cage stars in this neo-noir about a private investigator who delves into the world of snuff films.
    — Men's Health, 29 Mar. 2022
  • De Niro and Foster both earned Oscar nominations for their roles in the neo-noir film.
    — Sharareh Drury, Entertainment Weekly, 25 May 2026

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