How to Use protean in a Sentence

protean

adjective
  • That protean nature is reflected in his teams and his record.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 5 Sep. 2019
  • Here are just a few of the many ways your protean pork can be put to use for lunch or dinner to get you through the week.
    — Shilpa Uskokovic, Bon Appétit, 8 Sep. 2021
  • But not even the protean De Niro can reverse the relentless march of time.
    — Josh Rottenberg, Los Angeles Times, 2 Jan. 2020
  • The show's politics were either protean or static in a changing world.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 8 Sep. 2022
  • Davis spent his career sounding the depths of his protean creativity.
    — Helena Alonso Paisley, Miami Herald, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Theater, the most protean of art forms, and one of the oldest, has an especially complex genome.
    — New York Times, 20 Mar. 2020
  • In this box, works by over 20 composers receive readings that attest to his protean talents.
    — David Mermelstein, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2021
  • Still, Dudamel steps into a huge challenge for even a protean conductor.
    — Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr. 2021
  • In the meantime, less protean Democrats are making the affirmative case.
    — The Editors, National Review, 16 Apr. 2021
  • That’s a big risk considering how protean that technology still is.
    — Kate Aronoff, The New Republic, 13 May 2021
  • But English is such a beautiful, rich, protean language to render ugly and dumb.
    — Nr Editors, National Review, 25 July 2019
  • From these disparate influences, Squid has built something protean and compelling.
    — Sheldon Pearce, The New Yorker, 11 May 2021
  • Spielberg—youthful, awkward, affable, scarred—was a protean talent who found gold dust in every shot.
    — Michael O’Donnell, The Atlantic, 10 Feb. 2026
  • The twenty-four-year-old photographer’s ornate, protean wardrobe provides a kind of disguise.
    — Eren Orbey, The New Yorker, 18 July 2019
  • Lastly, and perhaps best of all, its protean appeal may be most appreciated in a Miesian, less-is-more, mode.
    — Beth Segal, cleveland, 15 Jan. 2022
  • Hawke’s protean energy was a kind of antidote to the anxiety of abandonment.
    — John Lahr, The New Yorker, 14 Sep. 2020
  • English is a big, big language — a sprawling, protean language — adopting and assimilating words and phrases from all over the world.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Roth’s output was protean, too wide, too deep and too fervent to truly capture in an appraisal of this length, composed overnight after learning of his death late the previous evening.
    — New York Times, 23 May 2018
  • The Sun is dying and a bomb the size of Manhattan is all that can save it in this thrill ride from protean filmmaker Danny Boyle.
    — Randall Colburn, EW.com, 16 May 2022
  • Today’s debate about fiscal union and debt mutualization obscures the fact that the eurozone already has protean versions of both.
    — Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Cabin visitors fight protean spirits of the dead with a chainsaw, a shotgun and Egyptian incantations.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2019
  • Thomas, an eminent artist and scholar, is protean and stubborn, aging and ageless, keenly attentive and impossible to pin down.
    — Andrew Marantz, New Yorker, 5 Apr. 2026
  • Balle’s protean impulse—her constant rewiring of thematic attachments—makes our reading experience varied and rich.
    — Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 10 Nov. 2025
  • The Armory has been a protean play space, some inspiring combination of coliseum, soundstage and great chamber.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 8 July 2022
  • Less than sixty days out from the election, Trump, unburdened by official campaign themes or facts, seems to be chasing a surprisingly large and protean coalition.
    — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 11 Sep. 2020
  • Making decisions about what is or isn’t safe in a protean pandemic is a mental workout, essentially asking your brain to do burpees in a funhouse of distorted logic.
    — Lila Thulin, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 May 2022
  • In the years since, Assayas has become a critical and art-house favorite, as well as perhaps the most protean and cosmopolitan of working French filmmakers.
    — Justin Chang, latimes.com, 17 May 2018
  • But the conditions, and the opportunities of streaming, are also ripe for a protean, fast-working filmmaker like Soderbergh.
    — Jake Coyle, Star Tribune, 24 June 2021
  • This month, de Lucchi revisits the dining table and chair for Stellar Works, a furniture maker that shares his protean outlook.
    — WSJ, 25 Apr. 2022
  • No one has explored the protean nature of science more prominently than the Viennese scientist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn.
    — Amitha Kalaichandran, Wired, 3 June 2021

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