How to Use pictorial in a Sentence

pictorial

adjective
  • The artist led many pictorial lives, and these are two at opposite poles.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 6 Sep. 2019
  • The pictorial space is as flat as a Parchesi board and equally jazzy.
    — Peter Plagens, WSJ, 20 Oct. 2017
  • If men are allowed to enjoy pictorial sexts from lovers, why can’t their partners?
    — Sophie Saint Thomas, Allure, 4 Apr. 2018
  • It is designed to be a pictorial essay and guide of the 13 missing works of art.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, courant.com, 11 Jan. 2018
  • The visual elements alone, like the opening pictorial key, are worth the price of the book.
    — Alexandra Lange, Curbed, 6 June 2019
  • The recital’s second half was devoted to three more or less pictorial pieces by Liszt.
    — Dallas News, 29 Sep. 2022
  • The cardboard pictorial cards are still sought today for their art and messaging.
    — Brenda Yenke, cleveland, 22 Apr. 2021
  • How do depictions of the halo change as pictorial space grows complex.
    — Ben Lerner, The New York Review of Books, 6 July 2020
  • Here, both the lack of color and finish and the trompe l’oeil draw attention to the painting’s pictorial rhetoric.
    — Washington Post, 23 Dec. 2020
  • But it's come to serve as a catch-all for other kinds of pictorial writing, from the Mayans to the Incas.
    — Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 24 July 2020
  • Among other things the show enables a visitor to compare the pictorial techniques and skills of the painters whose works are on view.
    — Steven Litt, cleveland.com, 25 Feb. 2018
  • This led me to go beyond conventions not only of pictorial structure but of content, too.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 17 Feb. 2023
  • It was followed by pictorial books on Rome, Moscow and Tokyo.
    — Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, 12 Sep. 2022
  • There’s a beautiful pictorial graphic sense to a lot of his work, but a lot of his writing is vaguely repellent.
    — Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, 10 Mar. 2022
  • Tom Fox won first place in the pictorial category for an image of a rainbow and an airplane in flight.
    — Tom Steele, Dallas News, 15 May 2021
  • The pictorial forms are stark and flat, although enhanced by dappled colors, in most of Curren’s works.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 13 May 2022
  • Why not place a clear pictorial symbol for a sun and a cloud instead, like what the Fujifilm Mini 9 has?
    — Shannon Liao, The Verge, 10 Aug. 2018
  • Visible on some stones are pictorial narratives and symbols—words between worlds.
    — Literary Hub, 15 Dec. 2025
  • The film’s pictorial expression remains under the top.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 18 Feb. 2026
  • Though tarot decks date back to the 1400s, pictorial cards were originally used for games rather than prediction.
    — Aliza Kelly Faragher, Allure, 6 Jan. 2020
  • The painting has a rhythm in the way its lines dance up and down across the canvas as if this were a pictorial analogue to a Jackson Pollock painting.
    — Tom Teicholz, Forbes, 22 Mar. 2023
  • In her pictorial world, fairies dance in the forest, toddlers swim naked, and older children are all tidy, cooperative and nicely dressed.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 16 Nov. 2023
  • The show teaches in vivid pictorial form the now far-too-long-running lesson of meeting hatred and violence with nonviolence and grace.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 9 Apr. 2021
  • Yeager was one of Hef’s go-to photographers, shooting eight centerfolds along with pictorial spreads.
    — Miami Herald Archives, Miami Herald, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Three area children designed the T-Rex pictorial postmarks, according to the news release.
    — David Anderson, baltimoresun.com, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Many bands of Plains tribes, like the Lakota, kept what are known as winter counts, pictorial histories drawn onto animal hides.
    — Graham Lee Brewer, NBC News, 3 June 2022
  • Check out the department’s pictorial HERE (and don’t miss the pirate).
    — Alexis Simendinger, The Hill, 23 July 2025
  • It was coined in Japan in the 1990s for small pictorial symbols used in electronic messaging.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026
  • One hundred years ago the Evening Tribune published this page as a pictorial review of the major news events of 1922.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Dec. 2022
  • Each piece spells out a message—happiness, beauty, and magnificence—in the ancient pictorial writing.
    — Paige Reddinger, Robb Report, 12 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pictorial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: