How to Use self-congratulatory in a Sentence

self-congratulatory

adjective
  • Or is there something a touch self-congratulatory about it, as well?
    — Deborah Treisman, New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2025
  • Don’t be swayed by the self-congratulatory rhetoric.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 9 Jan. 2026
  • This keeps you top of mind without coming across as self-congratulatory.
    — Benjamin Laker, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Only this episode is more than an hour long, the stories are fanciful at best and self-congratulatory at worst.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 10 May 2023
  • Anne Meara was the talk of the town in the role of a bag lady who spurned the self-congratulatory charity of guilty swells.
    — Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2025
  • Leftist slogans about hate are naught but smug, self-congratulatory moral preening.
    — Noah Rothman, National Review, 10 Nov. 2023
  • There's also a self-congratulatory aspect in the first few episodes that borders on gratuitous.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 19 Apr. 2024
  • Owens trots out replicas of the awards and places them onstage, little self-congratulatory bits that do not enhance the performance.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 29 Sep. 2023
  • At its worst, the earnestness curdles into self-congratulatory smarm.
    — Inkoo Kang, The New Yorker, 29 June 2024
  • Still, the general tone was self-congratulatory, and spilled over into the main order of business, the bestowing of awards.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 11 Mar. 2024
  • When the light of her self-congratulatory heroism fades, however, her reflexive move is to try to coax a stranger’s dog into attacking her own neck.
    — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2023
  • And the self-congratulatory swells taken in by his lies are really just projecting onto him all their neuroses and biases.
    — Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune, 13 Nov. 2024
  • The exhibition warrant is not touted in any wall texts, either exhorting or self-congratulatory; it’s just done.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 5 Sep. 2023
  • The self-congratulatory Beatles covers album is its own strange subgenre of bad soundtracks.
    — Stephen Deusner, SPIN, 22 Jan. 2024
  • The mood was celebratory and a bit self-congratulatory.
    — Mark Pazniokas, Hartford Courant, 14 May 2026
  • The fourth episode, which takes place in an unusual setting, might turn off some fans who are through with self-congratulatory sci-fi antics and just want the plot to deliver a solution to its puzzle box.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 17 Jan. 2025
  • These are all good reasons to feel bummed out about humanity, but leave it to Lanthimos to express his dismay in the most arch and self-congratulatory way possible.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Some of the offerings are short and the site itself is self-congratulatory, but after more than 100 years of shows that iconic amphitheater to the north of us has earned the right to brag.
    — David L. Coddoncontributor, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Mar. 2023
  • But a self-congratulatory tone was adopted after announcing a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs.
    — Time, 10 Apr. 2025
  • Nobody likes self-congratulatory marketing that treats charitable work like a trophy.
    — Renae Gregoire, Forbes.com, 12 May 2025
  • His supporters confuse the rah-rah motivation to an enthusiastic, self-congratulatory persona for a job well done.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 22 Jan. 2024
  • The first seven episodes are measured and considered, without some of the worst habits of the series in its lesser seasons and episodes (there are no quasi-dream-like states or self-congratulatory flourishes, thank goodness).
    — Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 25 June 2026
  • Politicians can always find a rationalization to spend taxpayer money on an unending list of needy programs coupled with a self-congratulatory press release.
    — Len Fasano, Hartford Courant, 8 Jan. 2025
  • Normally, Davos is a hotbed of planners and self-congratulatory humanitarians who dream up utopian schemes that then can be imposed from the top down by governments.
    — John Fund, National Review, 4 Feb. 2025
  • In a night full of self-congratulation, Chu’s speech was maybe the most self-congratulatory, somehow trying to make the case that the film was saving the world and also about … radical optimism?
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 6 Jan. 2025
  • His novel about the war, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), was a piece of self-congratulatory nonsense that made millions.
    — Vince Passaro, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
  • Sacrifice captures the tenor of these high-end charity events that are attended by the famous and ultra-wealthy, and have a tendency to land somewhere between tone-deaf to hopelessly self-congratulatory.
    — Mia Galuppo, HollywoodReporter, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Dissenters crashing the party of self-congratulatory agreement can be ostracized as troublemakers or malcontents.
    — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2023
  • There’s a sameness there that the series’s compressed adaptation of its source material only exacerbates, and that makes Dream’s one-note development feel thin and self-congratulatory.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 24 July 2025
  • Her enthusiasm for connection and her earnest (but never self-congratulatory) search for truth seem to seep into the foundations of the novel, which is ultimately a hopeful tale of family transformation.
    — Hannah Gold, New Yorker, 21 Jan. 2026

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