How to Use oracular in a Sentence

oracular

adjective
  • The first two scenes of the movie capture his oracular quality.
    — Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, 17 Nov. 2022
  • The oracular urge runs hot through Coelho’s lines but rarely generates much light.
    — Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2020
  • Even so, Barry has an oracular outlook.
    — Classical Music Critic, Los Angeles Times, 27 Mar. 2026
  • The grandeur of Boxley’s influence is conveyed by his terse, oracular speech.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2026
  • Mr Eliasson’s verdict on climate activism in art is more oracular.
    — The Economist, 19 Sep. 2019
  • His comments were aphoristic or oracular, but often infused with wit.
    — Martin Rees, Newsweek, 14 Mar. 2018
  • His comments were aphoristic or oracular, but often infused with wit.
    — Martin Rees, Discover Magazine, 14 Mar. 2019
  • Among members of the New Right, the works of Ayn Rand became oracular.
    — Win McCormack, The New Republic, 17 Sep. 2020
  • Dawson seizes the humor, pathos and tragedy of the sorrow songs of the cottonfield with an oracular vehemence.
    — Joseph Horowitz, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
  • These lines do not reveal some kind of oracular capacity in Lovecraft.
    — Siddhartha Deb, The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2021
  • And just because these models weren’t perfectly oracular doesn’t mean anyone was lying.
    — Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 10 Apr. 2020
  • His terse remarks take on an oracular quality that can preclude disagreement.
    — Jerry Adler, Newsweek, 14 Mar. 2018
  • His bogus oracular abilities, in city after city, proved to be a social lubricant.
    — Clare Bucknell, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
  • His bogus oracular abilities, in city after city, proved to be a social lubricant.
    — Clare Bucknell, Harper’s Magazine , 12 Oct. 2022
  • Her sentences are often spare and pared down and sculpted, and can feel almost oracular at times, conversational at others.
    — Alex Marshall, New York Times, 8 Oct. 2020
  • The puppet of my father had a tendency toward oracular pronouncements.
    — Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2023
  • This oracular quality gave Biden’s address a genuine and unexpected kind of grandeur.
    — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 26 Aug. 2020
  • These are texts, finally, to read and revisit, lean, oracular, irreducible.
    — Dustin Illingworth, latimes.com, 31 May 2018
  • Atwood has long been Canada’s most famous writer, and current events have polished the oracular sheen of her reputation.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2017
  • Maybe more than the oracular feeling vaguely robotic, however, the opposite is true—that the robotic reminds us of the oracle.
    — Literary Hub, 21 Jan. 2026
  • The novel offers a series of strong images of crowds, joined by a light, suggestive plot, and animated by oracular commentary.
    — Paul Elie, The New Yorker, 5 July 2020
  • Dazzled by Casanova’s glib claims to wield a mysterious oracular power, Bragadin offered to adopt him as a quasi-son on the spot.
    — Clare Bucknell, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
  • These lectures were must-attend events, packed by students expecting to be dazzled by the oracular insights of professorial sages.
    — Jeffrey Collins, WSJ, 18 Mar. 2022
  • The score, by Herdís Stefánsdóttir, is a kind of musical thundercloud, and the dialogue has an oracular growl to match.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2023
  • In this essay and other recent work, he’s turned away from the self-examining quality of his earlier writing to a literary style that’s oracular.
    — George Packer, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men.
    — Maggie Nelson, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
  • Levy, whose prose is at once declarative and concrete and touched with an almost oracular pithiness, has a gift for imbuing ordinary observations with the magic of metaphor.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2021
  • Morton describes the origin of Hyperobjects as oracular—like a radio transmission sent from the future.
    — Laura Hudson, Wired, 16 Nov. 2021
  • But that oracular status is also why MoMA’s shortcomings were always cast in so unforgiving a glare.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Oct. 2019
  • Farallon Capital became one of the world’s largest funds, due mainly to Steyer’s oracular way with undervalued stocks.
    — Rob Haskell, Vogue, 14 Nov. 2018

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