How to Use ontological in a Sentence

ontological

adjective
  • And with that comes profound ontological shock.
    — Josh Weiss, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2025
  • In the case of Nabokov and Borges, the ontological status is even less settled.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 30 Dec. 2024
  • Its ontological status is of something prior to functions and even to things.
    — James Parker, The Atlantic, 13 June 2024
  • That may go to show how glorious a bit of ontological security can be.
    — Faith Hill, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2025
  • The show is still beloved, a comforting haven of ontological order and self-confidence.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 11 Oct. 2022
  • That initial ontological confusion was shared by most of his colleagues.
    — George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 15 Dec. 2013
  • These daily acts of courage that transform you forever are at the core of ontological leadership.
    — Mikhail Saidov, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2024
  • The specter of death is nearly always present, framed by ontological discussions wrought in dizzying spirals of words.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2018
  • The very purpose of the foundation became a kind of ontological puzzle.
    — Alice Gregory, New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2025
  • There is fun, and glory, but underneath these is a more inchoate drive, an ontological imperative, maybe, to play with fire.
    — Rachel Kushner, Harper's Magazine, 2 Dec. 2024
  • And while that might sound a tad ontological for fans of pulp fictions with high body counts, rest assured that the God invoked here is definitely one of vengeance.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2018
  • There is no ontological truth to any of this, which means there is ample space to contest them, to criticize them, to deconstruct them and to put them back together again.
    — J.p. Brammer, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2023
  • As for Pale Male, who sired several more broods with several more mates, his current ontological status is unclear.
    — Andy Newman, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2017
  • Each, apparently, is the real Santa, which adds to the mind-bending ontological aspects of the whole business.
    — New York Times, 23 Dec. 2020
  • Can philosophy by itself resolve such an ontological quandary?
    — Peter Byrne, Quanta Magazine, 24 May 2013
  • Its formal and ontological affinities with dysfunction, fragmentation, and violence would seem to render that debt proverbial to the point of cliché.
    — Ara H. Merjian, ARTnews.com, 16 Apr. 2026
  • Likewise, my prompt to offer both an ontological and an epistemological answer to the question When does bread become toast?
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 7 Dec. 2022
  • But modernism already ended some time ago and with it, presumably, time itself, as it was widely rumored that space was supposed to replace time in the general ontological scheme of things.
    — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 15 Oct. 2024
  • But notwithstanding these painful periods of mutual adjustment, the process has so far worked and may prove a model for the ontological union of humanity.
    — Steve Fuller, Discover Magazine, 2 Feb. 2015
  • What follows is part exorcism, part dialogue with her dearly departed; part slide show and part ontological theorizing.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2017
  • His permanent search for a better version of himself is clearly influenced by Buddism and ontological coaching.
    — Billboard Argentina, Billboard, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Most organizations absorb the signal of ontological strain as operational friction and patch it at the workflow layer.
    — Urvish Parikh, Forbes.com, 15 May 2026
  • This represents an almost ontological difference between the two parties.
    — Ryu Spaeth, New Republic, 20 Dec. 2017
  • By these standards, the ontological commitments of the multiverse or the many-worlds interpretation are actually quite thin.
    — Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 4 June 2012
  • What's important to realize is that the ontological proof is perfectly logical -- that is, the conclusions follow inevitably from the premises.
    — Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 10 Mar. 2011
  • My scientific approach differs substantially in its guiding ontological commitments than those that guide current research on the nature of fear.
    — Dean Mobbs, Scientific American, 20 Sep. 2019
  • Earlier this week, Allen argued that Trump’s inability to tell the truth represented a kind of ontological problem that the media was ill-equipped to handle.
    — Alex Shephard, New Republic, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The underlying problem with the FCC’s approach may not be economic, but ontological.
    — Popular Mechanics, 17 June 2019
  • Spoto’s main focus is to merge philosophical and ideological themes with ontological practices around image-making.
    — Jazz Tangcay, Variety, 17 Mar. 2026
  • His ontological proof is an interesting intellectual venture and certainly has kept logicians busy since it was published 50 years ago, just before his death.
    — Steven Levy, Wired, 22 Oct. 2021

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