How to Use sadist in a Sentence

sadist

noun
  • Those remains bore the marks of a skilled woodsman and ritual sadist.
    — Paul Solotaroff, Rolling Stone, 9 June 2026
  • On the other side is a sly sadist named Ketchum, played by Stephen Dorff.
    — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 30 Sep. 2021
  • If Ritter is a masochist and a sadist, Eloise is a pure hedonist.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 21 Aug. 2025
  • Even Alice Winn’s Preshute is not safe from bullies and sadists.
    — Literary Hub, 16 Jan. 2026
  • But, yes, the Whitecloak encounter has also been tweaked to give us more of our favorite sadist.
    — Andrew Cunningham & Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 3 Dec. 2021
  • This is a sadist who is surprisingly committed to consent.
    — Natasha O'Neill, Vanity Fair, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Only a sociopath or a sadist could tell a lie of this magnitude, but again, such broad characters are par for the course in shows like this.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Fahadh Faasil plays the role of an egoist and sadist cop who hopes to capture and destroy Pushpa.
    — Sweta Kaushal, Forbes, 8 Dec. 2024
  • Only a sadist enjoys facing the ruthless Magic.
    — Fred Katz, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Wan delivers the kind of hilariously sick climax that only a sadist would spoil.
    — Jennifer Yuma, Variety, 11 Sep. 2021
  • Art is a true clown and a true sadist, a combination that yields the most repulsive kills in any of the films or shows represented on this list.
    — Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 9 May 2025
  • The hold of this little sadist, Daniel Ortega, and his comrades over Nicaragua has to break sometime.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 1 Apr. 2022
  • Except instead of treating his toys with kindness and love, like Andy, Bart has more in common with Sid, the sadist next door.
    — Joshua Kurp, Vulture, 4 Nov. 2024
  • His right side becomes a sadist, obsessed with systems of torture; his left is now possessed by a sickly goodness and grace; both sides are in love with the same woman, Pamela.
    — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2023
  • The hippies were counter-dreaming something new, and beginning to move in that direction all at the same time, singing the same song, and if were they left alone, what was in-control might slip away, like a woman held hostage by a sadist.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Stephens never plays a mustache-twirling sadist, instead carrying himself with the unbearable confidence of a man truly convinced that his version of abuse and even murder is civilized.
    — Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 17 May 2026
  • That’s what makes the H-E-B Carolina Reaper Cheese Puffs so unique and so irresistible to spice sadists like myself.
    — Taylor Tobin, Southern Living, 1 Oct. 2025
  • In each, a judgmental but creative sadist named Jigsaw devises elaborate traps to punish wrongdoers in viciously specific ways, such as a liar getting his tongue ripped out.
    — Chris Hewitt, Star Tribune, 13 May 2021
  • Thankfully, a number of cycling apparel brands think differently than the sadist who created that old PDM jersey.
    — Joe Lindsey, Outside Online, 1 June 2021
  • Depression is a white supremacist, a malignant narcissist, a rape apologist, a gaslighter, Iago, a sadist, a masochist, a hot Lego underfoot, a mind made hell.
    — Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • Kahekili is a sadist who’s gone mad with power-lust, and his son Kupule (Brandon Finn) can’t decide if, or how, to intervene as his father tortures and slaughters anyone who stands in his way.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 31 July 2025
  • Unlike other directorate heads, the majority of whom could be sorted in a Venn diagram between toady and sadist with broad overlap, Ivan was inherently good-natured.
    — Ew Staff, EW.com, 11 May 2021
  • Arthur has all but wasted to away to nothing during his time at the glorified prison, where the guards—led by Brendan Gleeson's jolly sadist Jackie—taunt and physically abuse the inmates.
    — Megan McCluskey, TIME, 4 Oct. 2024
  • Brewer, particularly, redefines the bullying aristocrat, played in the movie as a simpering sadist, but a more robust, complicated man onstage.
    — Michael Barnes, Austin American Statesman, 8 July 2025
  • Director Martin Scorsese repeats so many variations on this depressing mistreatment that experiencing the film is akin to being locked in a room with a pair of soulless sadists.
    — Kyle Smith, WSJ, 18 Oct. 2023
  • When that job ended, he was spared once again—this time because a Gestapo officer named Felix Landau, a sadist with artistic pretensions, enlisted him as his personal lackey.
    — Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2023
  • Moretz plays Reeve LeClaire, who is haunted by the memory of teenage captivity at the hands of a sadist and fears a return to the nightmare when she is asked to mentor a survivor and gets pulled into a game of cat and mouse.
    — Andreas Wiseman, Deadline, 16 July 2025
  • Rappaport strikes the right balance between making Paar both savior and sadist to Levant, and Wyse never overstays his welcome as the wide-eyed, impressionable Max.
    — Lester Fabian Brathwaite, EW.com, 25 Apr. 2023
  • The film follows Carin (Grace) and Allie (Shipka), whose road trip takes a harrowing turn when the two young women are kidnapped by a cold-blooded sadist and thrust into a brutal game of survival.
    — Matt Grobar, Deadline, 6 Feb. 2025
  • This juvenile sadist makes a hobby out of humiliation, intimidation, inflicting pain both physical and emotional.
    — Judy Berman, TIME, 30 Oct. 2024

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