How to Use palimpsest in a Sentence

palimpsest

noun
  • The ancient city is an architectural palimpsest.
  • Still, the portrait accrues meaning when viewed as a palimpsest.
    — Alexandra Styron, New York Times, 11 Feb. 2020
  • The trail is a palimpsest of their giant, pancake-round tracks and the lobed pads of hyenas or toes of civets.
    — Alex Postman, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 Apr. 2024
  • The Kessel find is a double palimpsest because the parchment was then used a third time.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 11 Apr. 2023
  • How such a storied place came to be ignored by most tourists is explained by its palimpsest quality.
    — Tamar Adler, Condé Nast Traveler, 31 May 2017
  • The code, a sort of palimpsest by now, becomes difficult to understand.
    — Ellen Ullman, WIRED, 1 Apr. 1999
  • What remains is a palimpsest of culture and history, as layered as a cross section of the earth itself.
    — Christopher Bollen, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2020
  • Georgetown is a good place to glimpse such palimpsests, which include the cobbles and streetcar tracks on O and P streets.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2019
  • The breast that produces black milk is the same breast that feeds the child, creating what can be termed a physical palimpsest of competing demands.
    — Fidan Cheikosman, JSTOR Daily, 1 Jan. 2025
  • Like the establishment itself, Tuxedo’s menu is a palimpsest, revealing both the past and the present.
    — Becky Cooper, The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2017
  • Subsequent impact events can heat up parts of a rock, glazing it with fields from later times and creating a magnetic palimpsest.
    — Byzack Savitsky, science.org, 20 Dec. 2022
  • Dating him forces her to reconceptualize the city not as a symbol—a palimpsest of elsewheres—but as a real location.
    — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2019
  • Thus, the home is also a palimpsest of her long career spent at the nexus of the worlds of fashion, art and design, and nearly everything in it has a story to tell.
    — Laura May Todd, New York Times, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Subsequent retaining walls and buttresses have transformed the bridge into a palimpsest of building styles.
    — David Laskin, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 June 2024
  • This sudden lumpy palimpsest — the absence of his body, the presence of mine — hit me, in that moment, as outrageous and weird and sad and embarrassing and funny.
    — New York Times, 11 May 2022
  • The line applies uncannily well to Las Vegas, that garish palimpsest of shrines to vice and Mammon.
    — Christine Cipriani, WSJ, 7 Apr. 2017
  • Caillebotte was fascinated by the transition, and by the way the city could be read as a kind of palimpsest, one historical layer on top of another.
    — Washington Post, 20 Jan. 2021
  • In the spacious interiors, walls are pared back to brick or sanded down to a palimpsest of paint layers resembling an expressionist canvas.
    — Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 23 Aug. 2019
  • Gysembergh remembered being struck by its potential when the Archimedes palimpsest was decoded.
    — Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 18 Apr. 2023
  • The road there led west through a palimpsest of onetime front lines to an army encampment, where four domed tents, their tarpaulin covers tattered and torn by the wind, had been erected for receiving refugees.
    — National Geographic, 17 Oct. 2016
  • The photographs capture reality but, by repetition, distort the image until what’s left is a blurred and layered palimpsest of form and tone.
    — OregonLive.com, 3 Jan. 2018
  • Phelps and his fellow researchers are making images of the palimpsests available online, so scholars can explore the secret writings that have recently been brought to light.
    — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 5 Sep. 2017
  • The key coastal towns include Positano, a wedding cake of colors tumbling down to the water, and Amalfi, a palimpsest of architectural eras.
    — Lauren Mowery, Forbes, 31 Dec. 2022
  • In his own office upstairs, nails and hooks studded the walls behind him — a palimpsest of the photos, certificates and honorary police badges displayed there until very recently.
    — Cody Copeland, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 18 June 2024
  • The multispectral imaging of the palimpsest was carried out in January 2020.
    — Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 18 Apr. 2023
  • The palimpsest of time is an enduring fascination for Barada in a city that is constantly morphing, sometimes in ways that erode the quality of life.
    — Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Elsewhere, the interior spaces are palimpsests, bearing the quiet traces of previous tenants.
    — M. Z. Adnan, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2023
  • Traces of old words on a palimpsest survive cleanings and erosion, as fondness and hurt do, even if the word situationship communicates such feelings never developed.
    — Cassie Owens, Philly.com, 5 Apr. 2018
  • Visitors will need to respect the rules of the mosques in Turkey and dress appropriately, but there is no longer a fee to experience the ultimate palimpsest of a building.
    — Katie Nadworny, Travel + Leisure, 16 Aug. 2021
  • The ever-changing palimpsest of local lockdowns, quarantine conditions and cross-border travel restrictions may hamper festivals’ chance to achieve their best for months or years to come.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 9 Sep. 2021

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