How to Use stilted in a Sentence

stilted

adjective
  • The stilted house even provides its own porch for views from above.
    — Patrick Connolly, orlandosentinel.com, 27 Aug. 2020
  • Overall, the video comes across pretty stilted for most of its run time.
    — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 26 July 2024
  • Musk's mom appears on stage — little stilted, as these things go.
    — Andy Hoglund, EW.com, 9 May 2021
  • The dance is her, to be sure – lots of severe, stilted movements and cues from decades past.
    — Scottie Andrew, CNN, 18 Dec. 2022
  • Even a recent birthday party for one of Aaron’s sons was a bit stilted.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 20 Oct. 2019
  • In the light of day everything looks a little stilted, a little off.
    — Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2022
  • The problem is that those lines get more and more stilted, taking many of the performances with them.
    — Caroline Framke, Variety, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Browsing the web and general app performance are both a bit stilted.
    — PCMAG, 18 Sep. 2023
  • At their best, the translations are a bit stilted, and the captions pop up just late enough to make following along tricky.
    — Chris Velazco, Washington Post, 4 July 2024
  • The stilted dialogue is largely gone, replaced by a goofy but still familiar take on teen slang.
    — Julie Muncy, Ars Technica, 28 Sep. 2018
  • All of this unfolds with prose that is borderline stilted and with major and minor plot turns that make little sense.
    — Richard Lipez, Dallas News, 26 Aug. 2019
  • And yet the conversations lack juice, and the engagement is halting and stilted.
    — The New Yorker, 10 Sep. 2021
  • So if my emotions are real — and as an actor, that’s my goal — then the stilted, strange dialogue will seem real, too.
    — Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, 12 July 2019
  • Making small talk can be more stilted over Zoom, and, sometimes, people just don’t get your sense of humor over Slack.
    — Chloe Berger, Fortune, 24 Aug. 2022
  • The playful spirit of Empire cuts the stilted self-seriousness down to size.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 30 Oct. 2019
  • And like-minded locals were encouraged to distribute fliers – and to look past the stilted English.
    — Jeremy Roebuck, Philly.com, 19 Feb. 2018
  • This is not the way of ordinary mortals, though, and the play’s more explanatory dialogue can sound stilted in the mouths of her actors.
    — Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times, 5 Feb. 2018
  • Amazon has been working on the AI technology that allows Alexa to speak to make the its voice sound more natural and less stilted.
    — Mike Murphy, Quartz, 25 Sep. 2019
  • Around the turn of the century, The Times realized the need to modernize its approach to the love beat; coverage had to be more approachable and less stilted.
    — Megan Ditrolio, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2023
  • Inspired by Arcachon’s traditional stilted fishing huts, this signature suite has been styled by a succession of couture designers, starting with Maison Martin Margiela.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 6 May 2026
  • Tensions between Rian and Patrick flare when Rian drunkenly mentions a brief fling with Shiv, though the film’s clunky edit, which gives little room for the performances to breathe and play out organically within their contexts, makes these frictions feel stilted and juvenile.
    — Beatrice Loayza, Variety, 22 May 2026

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