How to Use potboiler in a Sentence

potboiler

noun
  • His writing can be a bit all over the map, but this new potboiler is just nifty fun.
    — Marshall Heyman, Vulture, 21 Apr. 2021
  • Hands of the Ripper is a potboiler in the truest sense of the word.
    — Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 30 Oct. 2024
  • Hands of the Ripper is a potboiler in the truest sense of the word.
    — Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 3 Nov. 2022
  • All of which isn’t to make The Beguiled sound like a campy potboiler.
    — Hillary Busis, VanityFair.com, 22 June 2017
  • What happened to her career has become the great potboiler mystery of tennis.
    — Jon Wertheim, SI.com, 22 Aug. 2019
  • But then Tina Brown, the writer making the comment in her new royal potboiler, is not, in that sense, nice.
    — Anna Mundow, WSJ, 22 Apr. 2022
  • As a young man, Bourgoin resembled a character out of a potboiler.
    — Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2022
  • This sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller or a paperback potboiler in which the world is heading for conflagration.
    — The Economist, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Collins was a kind of potboiler Proust, writing about Hollywood bashes in her diaries, tart excerpts of which are read in voice-over.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 23 June 2021
  • Published in 1987, Mahmoody’s pulp memoir had all the makings of a potboiler.
    — Audrey Clare Farley, The New Republic, 25 Aug. 2021
  • The series struggles from the start to balance its potboiler thrills with family drama, however, and by the second half is getting lost in its own weeds.
    — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Curators tell stories, and the Met could use more with a potboiler sensibility.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 21 Dec. 2023
  • This ancient political thriller has all the ingredients of a modern-day potboiler.
    — Anand Neelakanthan, Quartz India, 20 Dec. 2019
  • But around 1890, with the rise of naturalism, critics soured on the potboilers that made her flamboyance shine.
    — Rachel Shteir, WSJ, 23 Aug. 2018
  • Their conflict centered on the perennials of business potboilers, namely power and money.
    — David Segal, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2018
  • The conventions and gestures of a topical potboiler—reflexive eye rolls, snap-worthy tell-offs—clearly excite him.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Like her potboilers, Little Women was written for money—but unlike her steamier works, it was published under her own name.
    — René Ostberg, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 May 2026
  • But if the plot has too many potboiler elements, the characters are considerably more convincing in their disturbed emotions.
    — Kenneth Turan, chicagotribune.com, 8 June 2017
  • Get ready to simmer in the latest potboiler from prolific creator Taylor Sheridan.
    — Lynette Rice, EW.com, 3 Dec. 2021
  • Overcomplicated chronology is now a cliché of modern TV storytelling, but a good potboiler knows how to put a cliché to good use.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 14 Mar. 2024
  • And pivoting from the intimacy of Creed to a generation-spanning family epic straight out of a potboiler novel is just a weird call all around.
    — Todd Vanderwerff, Vox, 21 Nov. 2018
  • Balancing business and pleasure exquisitely, watching Scandal is like indulging in a potboiler soap opera and political satire all at once.
    — Chris Snellgrove, EW.com, 22 Dec. 2024
  • Unlike that wife, Hitler at least gets some grudging respect and decent dialogue in this potboiler about the diplomatic efforts to stop Germany.
    — New York Times, 20 Jan. 2022
  • In the midst of his professional renaissance, Downey met his future wife on the set of 2003's potboiler Gothika.
    — Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 13 July 2023
  • How to Blow Up a Pipeline could have become a dour, moralistic exercise or a potboiler devoid of politics.
    — Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 8 Apr. 2023
  • What distinguishes the plot from a potboiler Western is the vivid portrayal of Joshua’s transformation.
    — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 17 Aug. 2021
  • In George Seaton’s star-studded adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s potboiler, the big disaster comes late in the story.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 19 Sep. 2025
  • However, a decent Bollywood potboiler needs a dash of the Mumbai underworld.
    — Andy Mukherjee | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 25 Oct. 2019
  • But Keefe’s story is no simple potboiler, and Say Nothing bears little resemblance to the typical true-crime drama.
    — Judy Berman, TIME, 3 Dec. 2024
  • The men were involved in an industry that produced racy potboilers about the mainland’s Communist Party leadership.
    — Raymond Zhong, New York Times, 15 Aug. 2019

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