How to Use vicarious in a Sentence

vicarious

adjective
  • In a series of posts, the pair gave us a vicarious tour through the iconic city.
    — Emily Wang, Glamour, 23 July 2018
  • There's a bit of vicarious living going on there in the songs.
    — Tatiana Tenreyro, Billboard, 6 Sep. 2017
  • The process goes smoothly enough, but this vicarious thrill reels out of control in a hurry.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Call it cyber-vicarious — scary fast and almost as good as being there.
    — Bill Monroe, oregonlive, 11 Mar. 2022
  • For Austin and perhaps others, the thrill will soon not be vicarious.
    — Billy Witz, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2016
  • Even for teens who aren’t already living with mental health strains, vicarious trauma can take a toll.
    — Claire Lampen, Teen Vogue, 24 May 2018
  • Of course, that doesn't give investors the vicarious buzz of sharing in their favorite artists' success.
    — Megan Cerullo, CBS News, 8 Mar. 2024
  • Here are nine movies about the vicarious thrill of victory and the secondhand agony of defeat.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 26 Jan. 2023
  • Alcon will have one more chance to fix claims for direct and vicarious copyright infringement.
    — Winston Cho, HollywoodReporter, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The twist here is that vicarious redemption is actually the theme of the opera and not just its modus operandi.
    — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 Oct. 2022
  • This is called vicarious trauma.
    — Angelica Stabile, FOXNews.com, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Such vicarious voyages through the past and present of classical music from the comfort of your couch may be no match for the real thing.
    — Washington Post, 10 Sep. 2020
  • So, there is pleasure to be had from these vicarious visits to Dodge, but are there any other benefits?
    — Mathias Clasen, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Sport lifts people with a feeling of vicarious striving for perfection even when their team loses.
    — The Economist, 31 Oct. 2019
  • Getting lost in a romance novel gave her the vicarious thrill of falling in love without having to talk to or touch anyone.
    — Lisa Bonos, Dallas News, 23 July 2019
  • Research shows that the effect of vicarious grief is strongest when a person identifies with the victims.
    — New York Times, 10 Mar. 2022
  • Viewers can’t look away, cringe from vicarious fear, or some combination of both — and are amazed that Thompson isn’t fazed at all.
    — Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2021
  • Right now, so much of the incarceration and trauma winds up being vicarious through my puppy.
    — Marlow Stern, Rolling Stone, 31 Oct. 2023
  • For some, part of 50 Cent fandom was their vicarious thrill of following his drama.
    — Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 9 Feb. 2023
  • The temptation for a vicarious do-over is immense, and so are the stage-mom rationalizations.
    — Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker, 18 Jan. 2016
  • Fremdscham is a term for vicarious embarrassment, a sort of inverse of schadenfreude.
    — David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 26 Jan. 2026
  • God, the sight of an airport terminal before the holidays is giving me vicarious stress.
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 23 Nov. 2023
  • Black death is a rising commodity, and fans eager for the most potent hit of vicarious awe want artists to give them a frontline glimpse of nihilism.
    — Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 3 Sep. 2025
  • The sole claim the jury will decide is whether Disney is liable for vicarious infringement.
    — Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Dec. 2023
  • Forty-seven years after that vicarious connection, Dobbins met Tyler face to face for the first time last month.
    — Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2023
  • The vicarious thrill of veering into the unreasonable, of making a scene.
    — Meaghan O'Connell, Longreads, 20 July 2017
  • The novel can be read as a stirring meditation on grief or a vicarious confrontation with the joys and risks of motherhood.
    — Patrick Iber, The New Republic, 5 Aug. 2021
  • Setting her apart from others in the group was an idiosyncratic rather than a vicarious motive for rising to the bait of a bedazzling newness.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2022
  • Scroll down to get your vicarious party on with designers, artists, models—and an Olympic skateboarder.
    — Vogue, 28 June 2021
  • Third, the right to bring a defamation case should be limited to the person who claims injury; suits should not be available to anyone who takes vicarious offence.
    — The Economist, 13 July 2017

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