How to Use world-building in a Sentence

world-building

noun
  • If the first film felt like endless world-building and set-up, have no fear.
    — Scott Phillips, Forbes, 4 Jan. 2025
  • The vivid world-building lends real heft to the love stories.
    — Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 8 Aug. 2025
  • And that’s world-building/defining.
    — Literary Hub, 27 Jan. 2026
  • This theme park is also home to live shows and a great deal of careful world-building.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 17 June 2025
  • Or sometimes, allowing both to be true can be a form of world-building.
    — Literary Hub, 27 Jan. 2026
  • That kind of world-building appealed to him more than the story of this kid who becomes a god.
    — WIRED, 19 Sep. 2023
  • The gold digger motif also spiced up her world-building.
    — Gail Mitchell, Billboard, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Walker’s world-building around the opaque adult Jane, though, is less assured.
    — Leah Greenblatt, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Burton, long revered for his quirky world-building genius, needs to get his macabre back, bigtime.
    — Karen D'souza, The Mercury News, 25 Sep. 2024
  • Each outfit in this sense serves as a memory and a call toward the work of world-building.
    — Najha Zigbi-Johnson, Essence, 30 Apr. 2025
  • What does work in this film are the performances and some elements of its world-building.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, HollywoodReporter, 23 May 2025
  • More than just digital wayfinding aids, maps are strategic tools of world-building.
    — Patty Heyda, The Conversation, 1 June 2026
  • Charli’s praise of world-building echoes the way that marketers and influencers talk.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 24 Feb. 2026
  • The 40-year-old was also inspired by Dior’s world-building skills.
    — Joelle Diderich, Footwear News, 27 June 2025
  • The alt-pop of the past fifteen years has delighted in over-the-top personae and world-building.
    — Mitch Therieau, New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2026
  • The result of their joint artistic labor amounts to idiosyncratic world-building with a retro sheen.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 31 Jan. 2025
  • How does your approach to world-building in music differ from comedy?
    — Nate Jackson, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2024
  • The duo has a long-term, world-building plan for DC across movies and TV series.
    — Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 12 Sep. 2025
  • How this all will ultimately lead to world-building applications is hazy—and that’s part of the point.
    — Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 3 July 2025
  • Your world-building feels deceptively deep.
    — MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Mar. 2026
  • Clunky but effective world-building follows.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 12 Aug. 2025
  • The elaborate world-building and precinct plot yielded a timeless film that would be studied and enjoyed for decades to come.
    — Jordan Runtagh, Peoplemag, 31 Mar. 2024
  • Readers get all the best parts of swoony love story tropes, magical world-building and high-stakes adventure.
    — Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY, 14 Dec. 2024
  • Its cross-cultural world-building—etched, with shabbily retro flair, in boxy frames of grainy 16-mm.
    — Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2025
  • As far as fake stories go, this one had some admittedly impressive world-building.
    — Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Elsewhere in the interview, Elliott discussed some of the plans for world-building in this next film.
    — Charlotte Phillipp, Peoplemag, 22 Apr. 2024
  • People certainly aren’t looking for the next Game of Thrones or the next world-building show.
    — Lacey Rose, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 Nov. 2023
  • Nothing else gets accomplished at the opera other than some wonderful world-building.
    — Alice Burton, Vulture, 30 Mar. 2026
  • The Rhode campaigns have become an exercise in world-building for Bieber.
    — Hikmat Mohammed, Footwear News, 9 June 2025
  • All of this is necessary world-building for the rest of the season’s stories, after the first two episodes were so much about the siblings.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 19 Aug. 2025

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