How to Use pigeonhole in a Sentence

pigeonhole

1 of 2 noun
  • In the interim, Tudor has tried to shrug off the stereotypes and step out of the pigeonholes.
    — James Horncastle, New York Times, 15 Feb. 2026
  • And to his credit, Leitch escapes that pigeonhole … only to get trapped in another.
    — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2022
  • Now, all those necessities of travel must be poked into a narrow pigeonhole on the console, just forward of the shifter.
    — Patrick Bedard, Car and Driver, 26 Jan. 2023
  • Princeton had this sort of, this pigeonhole for faculty wives, they just were supposed to go to the certain parties and behave in a certain way.
    — Katie Hafner, Scientific American, 7 Apr. 2022
  • Taking their name from a childhood board game, Hüsker Dü evaded pigeonholes while outshining most of their punk brethren.
    — Jason Heller, The Atlantic, 9 Oct. 2017
  • Beefheart built a rabid cult following with an abrasive style that’s tough to pigeonhole (and, for the faint of heart, tough to comfortably sit through).
    — Ryan Reed, SPIN, 16 July 2024
  • No doubt the actress has also been misunderstood, having to escape a pigeonhole that her beloved April put her in.
    — Tim Grierson, Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2023
  • The story is imagined by a filmmaker with a nose for elements that so often go missing among many movies put in the horror pigeonhole.
    — John Anderson, WSJ, 16 Aug. 2022
  • Or, going back to our sign, everything else goes into the general partnership pigeonhole.
    — Jay Adkisson, Forbes, 27 June 2022
  • Much like Chambers is indelibly linked to funk and fusion, White tends to be pigeonhole as a fusion patriarch.
    — Andrew Gilbert, The Mercury News, 20 Mar. 2024
  • Lynne grew increasingly frustrated with her Nashville pigeonhole, and was not shy about saying so in public.
    — Mary Colurso | [email protected], AL.com, 25 Aug. 2017
  • In fact, Leurechon also chose the example of hairiness to introduce the pigeonhole principle.
    — Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Schumann created a nuanced new genre unfit for generic pigeonholes that includes aspects of opera, oratorio, chamber music and song.
    — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 4 June 2018
  • Both Los Angeles and Mexico City have dining ecosystems too vast to pigeonhole; flashy glamour will always be part of them.
    — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 13 July 2023
  • Entertaining—and admittedly not too significant—statements can be derived from the pigeonhole principle.
    — Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Similarly defying pigeonholes is Christopher Patton, who has optically transformed close-ups of his handwriting into a series of abstract images, made into a video loop.
    — Gary Faigin, The Seattle Times, 26 June 2017
  • Why did conventional wisdom, mainstream media, even college-level psychology courses, all pigeonhole such a significant portion of the population as irredeemable villains?
    — Patric Gagne, TIME, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Despite the versatility Kleijn describes, the cello is mostly associated with Western classical music — a pigeonhole traditionally sidestepped, for whatever reason, by its violin and double bass siblings.
    — Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune, 28 June 2022

pigeonhole

2 of 2 verb
  • She likes to perform different types of music because she doesn't want to be pigeonholed.
  • There is a part of me that didn’t want to be pigeonholed.
    — Mikey O'Connell, HollywoodReporter, 14 Nov. 2025
  • That’s just one of those things that pigeonhole comics.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 29 Mar. 2026
  • Why do people get pigeonholed as bad or good in the first place?
    — Danny Westneat, The Seattle Times, 7 July 2017
  • It's not just pigeonholed into one spot.
    — Tax Notes Staff, Forbes.com, 23 June 2026
  • But, don’t pigeonhole people —their feelings may change over time.
    — Gwen Moran, Fortune, 9 Sep. 2019
  • That could pigeonhole the type of line the Dolphins can feature.
    — Omar Kelly, sun-sentinel.com, 1 Sep. 2020
  • What sets Gupta apart is his refusal to be pigeonholed.
    — Ritu Upadhyay, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • There is nothing about this book that is pigeonholed or apologetic.
    — Tyler Ford, Teen Vogue, 29 Aug. 2018
  • Hamill could not always avoid being pigeonholed.
    — Sanat Pai Raikar, Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Mar. 2026
  • He was also fed up at being pigeonholed as a Cherokee artist.
    — Jori Finkel, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2017
  • Executives had pigeonholed her as a rom-com queen.
    — New York Times, 14 Mar. 2026
  • We are often pigeonholed as being hosts or servers in the industry.
    — George McCalman, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 May 2018
  • That’s hardly the only time Davis has been pigeonholed in her career.
    — Galina Espinoza, Flow Space, 10 Sep. 2025
  • In its opening moments, Blasé Saint seems easy to pigeonhole.
    — Dash Lewis, Pitchfork, 24 Feb. 2026
  • There’s no way to really pigeonhole the region because there’s a lot of great people all over.
    — Ben Flanagan | [email protected], al, 21 Aug. 2019
  • People in our business sometimes get pigeonholed as just sports people.
    — Mike Anthony, courant.com, 15 Dec. 2017
  • But don’t pigeonhole them as a summer specialty.
    — Scott Douglas, Outside, 3 Feb. 2026
  • While pigeonholing has no place in their work, finishing each other’s sentences is a big part of the process.
    — Erika Houle, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2023
  • The Vikings must find a way to run or throw with dominance to pigeonhole defenses.
    — Alec Lewis, New York Times, 16 June 2026
  • But Burns doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into that description.
    — Jean E. Palmieri, Footwear News, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Those are broad strokes, of course, and no doubt there are fans who would squirm at being politically pigeonholed.
    — Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Some may try to pigeonhole Flowers as a slot receiver at the next level because of his size.
    — David Furones, Sun Sentinel, 4 Mar. 2023
  • My secret ambition was to break out of whatever pigeonhole that people had placed me in.
    — David Lyman, Cincinnati.com, 28 July 2017
  • The press was not particularly kind in their attempt to pigeonhole him.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 10 June 2026
  • Even Jeff himself is written in such a way that he can’t be pigeonholed as a character one way or the other.
    — Karen Han, Vox, 8 Sep. 2018
  • The idea is less to pigeonhole people and more to remember that not everyone is exactly like you.
    — Business Insider, Fortune, 24 Aug. 2017
  • The days of Dallas pigeonholing itself into a small set of coverages should be a thing of the past.
    — John Owning, Dallas News, 29 Jan. 2020
  • Harbaugh did not want to pigeonhole Hamilton as a nickel back going forward.
    — Childs Walker, Baltimore Sun, 18 Nov. 2022
  • German actors abroad are often pigeonholed as villains.
    — Scott Roxborough, HollywoodReporter, 17 May 2026

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