How to Use unshowy in a Sentence

unshowy

adjective
  • This is a hotel for grownups that manages to be at once grandly historical and unshowy.
    — Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 May 2018
  • Then there’s Wesolowski’s deft, unshowy rhythm guitar playing.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Bezucha’s style is unshowy, using the beauty of the natural landscape.
    — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 4 Nov. 2020
  • The cast is uniformly excellent, in a suitably unshowy but fully lived-in way.
    — New York Times, 22 Feb. 2022
  • As a pivotal but unshowy sequence, the campfire scene required fine-tuning at every stage.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 12 Aug. 2024
  • One of this novel’s striking achievements is to offer murky conjecture in crisp, dry, stately (yet unshowy) prose.
    — Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2021
  • In contrast to the corruption that surrounds him, Suiter does his job with unshowy integrity.
    — New York Times, 29 Apr. 2022
  • Rucker has one of the most distinctive male voices in country — a rich-as-molasses baritone with a hint of unshowy soulfulness.
    — Jon Bream, Star Tribune, 19 June 2021
  • To the casual observer, the cadre style is unremarkable, because being unshowy is part of the point.
    — Christian Shepherd, Washington Post, 15 Aug. 2022
  • Yet those who know him describe a man of unshowy modesty and collegiality, with little discernible pretension.
    — Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2017
  • With her short hair and unshowy clothing, Fan Chunli looks every bit the middle-aged woman from rural China.
    — Daniel Wine, CNN Money, 30 July 2025
  • But the movies, both shot by cinematographer Ki Jin Kim, are of a piece in their emotional nuance and unshowy sense of place.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2020
  • If that all sounds vaguely gory and Hollywood, please read it, once, twice, three times, because Trevor’s genius is varied, unshowy and profound.
    — Katherine A. Powers, WSJ, 11 May 2018
  • King portrays her with the dignity, grit and passion of a trailblazer who made a difference, though the performance is rigorously unshowy.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Mar. 2024
  • Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell give admirably unshowy star performances.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Dec. 2022
  • But then came Mr Phillips (2000), an unshowy third-person narrative about a day in the life of a middle-aged accountant.
    — James Walton, The New York Review of Books, 1 July 2021
  • Supporting actor Yura Borisov getting traction for his unshowy, reactive performance could be a sign voters may be ready to put a ring on it.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 21 Dec. 2024
  • Even the camera, which generally serves the story in as fluid and unshowy a way as possible, can’t help but be magnetized by the sheer dynamism of Foxx’s screen presence.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 10 Oct. 2023
  • But there’s a wealth of psychological mystery in Sutherland’s unshowy, uninflected turn.
    — A.a. Dowd, Vulture, 25 June 2024
  • Strout’s prose, unshowy, sparing of metaphor but vivid with both necessary and contingent detail, matches her democracy of subject and theme, and seems agile enough to describe any human situation.
    — Pankaj Mishra, The New York Review of Books, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Nor are his characters cartoons like Ted; most, including Zero, quickly become multifaceted people, courtesy of a cast blessed with unshowy charisma.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 4 June 2025
  • Kingsley, outfitted with a horribly unflattering wig and glasses, never once winks to the audience with his dignified, unshowy performance that is all the more effective for its restraint.
    — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Aug. 2023
  • Soprano Jamie Chamberlin sang the demanding high tessitura role of Isolde with unshowy reserve.
    — Rick Schultz, latimes.com, 16 May 2018
  • To be fair to les frères Dardennes, there is a reliable level of unshowy competence as well as an integrity to their insistence on embedding with unglamorous, recognizable people.
    — Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire, 23 May 2025
  • Like Lithgow, his performance is supremely unshowy, the flashes of passion being timed and placed by him and Hytner to erupt only when strictly necessary to the developing drama.
    — David Benedict, Variety, 7 May 2025
  • Taking its aesthetic from the cool neutrality of institutional settings, the film has a sleek but unshowy aesthetic nicely supported by all design and tech contributors.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 17 Sep. 2024
  • Schrader’s directorial manner is tightly restrained, spare and unshowy, not even conspicuous in its austerity, but marked by a sleek and fragile tension that suggests a volcano that’s ready to blow just beneath the surface.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2023
  • As other scholars have noted, images like this one coincided with a growing distaste for fake, look-at-me bourgeois society; there was a hunger for good, plain people absorbed in plain, unshowy things, inviting viewers to forget themselves, too.
    — Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2023
  • Sparkes draws a quiet, unshowy performance from Lefler as an innocent who’s trying to sort out truth from lies, and who feels a sense of responsibility and importance beyond her years, along with dispiriting guilt when her powers fail her.
    — Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Sep. 2023
  • While the marvelous Garcia is the heart of the movie, her unshowy performance strikes an exquisite balance with the more gregarious manner of Claudio Rissi in what's largely a two-hander.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 May 2017

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