How to Use shape-shifter in a Sentence

shape-shifter

noun
  • Not only is it filled with hostile life-forms, but the planet itself is a shape-shifter — meaning its geography changes with each new mission.
    — ABC News, 24 Apr. 2026
  • This tangy shape-shifter has endured millennia of social and technological evolution and has emerged a culinary powerhouse many cooks can’t live or leaven without.
    — Emily Saladino, Bon Appetit Magazine, 20 Mar. 2026
  • There’s no real benefit to showing more of the human Pennywise, which, if anything, undermines the horror of the shape-shifter’s most infamous form.
    — Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 8 Dec. 2025
  • While Coqotamat is a shape-shifter who wears the faces of a thousand women to lure children away and swallow them whole, the girls are running away from a fate that has been wearing the same face for generations.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • One particularly compelling framework plays on the idea of the family—again, especially Kim, as cultural shape-shifters.
    — Literary Hub, 28 May 2026
  • And while New York has long been seen as more main character than setting in many movies and series, Los Angeles has, historically, leveraged its shape-shifter abilities.
    — Culture Critic, Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2026
  • Hatcher — a Pomo shape-shifter who dodges prejudice by passing as Mexican in the novel — is a thorny protagonist, often cunning, scheming and unforgiving.
    — Maddie Connors, Los Angeles Times, 24 June 2026
  • In this telling, Warsh is a partisan shape-shifter who advocates for high interest rates (which results in slower growth and higher unemployment) under Democrats and lower rates (faster growth, lower unemployment) under Republicans.
    — Rogé Karma, The Atlantic, 30 Jan. 2026
  • In his experiences and chronicles of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, Curzio Malaparte was a shape-shifter—pitiless, clinical, cynical, unsentimental, indifferent to morality and idealism.
    — Rachel Donadio, The New York Review of Books, 5 Feb. 2026
  • In his experiences and chronicles of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, Curzio Malaparte was a shape-shifter—pitiless, clinical, cynical, unsentimental, indifferent to morality and idealism.
    — Leah Downey, The New York Review of Books, 7 Feb. 2026
  • Like previous winners Everything Everywhere All at Once and Anora, OBAA was an Oscars shape-shifter capable of embodying multiple narratives at the same time.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 16 Mar. 2026

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