How to Use object lesson in a Sentence

object lesson

noun
  • His life story is an object lesson in how not to run a business.
  • The film will be a masque and an object lesson.
    — David Wingrave, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • The film will be a masque and an object lesson.
    — Harpers Magazine, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Reading by the light of Yamanaka’s work, let this novel of terrible beauty be an object lesson in how to tell what is worth saving.
    — Literary Hub, 17 June 2025
  • Cory Booker offers Democrats an object lesson in how to seize this opportunity.
    — Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Sep. 2025
  • But the back half is a heady object lesson in the limits of partnership—how even the right person can’t fully quell whatever torment lurks in the recesses of one’s consciousness.
    — Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 15 June 2026
  • The scenes playing out in Minneapolis in recent weeks offer an object lesson in the dangers of federal overreach.
    — Stephen Mihm, Mercury News, 5 Feb. 2026
  • The scenes playing out in Minneapolis in recent weeks offer an object lesson in the dangers of federal overreach.
    — Stephen Mihm, Twin Cities, 8 Feb. 2026
  • The lead-up to Kennedy’s circus of sci-fi fantasists and food bloggers provides an object lesson in how the left cedes fertile political territory to the right.
    — Annie Levin, Washington Post, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Within weeks of his rousing debut, Platner became an object lesson in the perils of rolling the dice with an unvetted neophyte in such a crucial Senate battleground.
    — Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic, 16 Mar. 2026
  • Then there is the Sneaker Table, framing his Nike collaborations as an object lesson, as well as the Archive Table, a working display of reference materials, personal and never-before-seen objects.
    — Tianwei Zhang, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Turning the series’ main case from an object lesson in institutional corruption into a very specific and contained crime — because this is a TV show, the presence of a serial killer borders on inevitable — denies The Rainmaker any kind of actual substance.
    — Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 14 Aug. 2025
  • After 170 rolling strikes, more than 10,000+ Southern California hotel workers ratified contracts at 34 properties with record raises—an object lesson in how collective action converts inflation anxiety into take-home pay.
    — Teresa Ghilarducci, Forbes.com, 1 Sep. 2025
  • Paradise Metal—the debut of Father Dionysios Tabakis, a 53-year-old priest in Nafplio, a small Greek city off the Argolic Gulf—is actually a series of epiphanies, an ostensible curiosity that functions as an object lesson about expectations.
    — Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork, 14 May 2026

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