How to Use canonical in a Sentence

canonical

adjective

• Most people don’t know this about him, and early translations of his work (most of which are canonical) don’t play this up at all.
  — Gabriel Roth, Slate Magazine, 16 Feb. 2017
• The dance is peppered with allusions to canonical ballets.
  — Michael Cooper, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2017
• Morton is now viewed as a canonical example of scientific misconduct.
  — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 8 June 2011
• The challenge for adaptations of canonical books is expanding the story to fill eight or ten or thirteen hours of television while staying true to the essence of the plot and the characters.
  — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 10 May 2017
• Sisters of Mercy is a canonical religious order that reports to the Vatican.
  — Jill Tucker, Esquire, 13 May 2016
• Some hunted beyond the comic section in search of answers, into the ambiguous world of Garfield-themed merchandise and quasi-canonical arguments.
  — The Washington Post, The Mercury News, 1 Mar. 2017
• These results confirm and extend those of the earlier study and present a striking challenge to near-canonical beliefs about Old Italian violins.
  — Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 28 Apr. 2014
• The best way to think of this syncing system is that the server copy of a file is the canonical file.
  — Scott Gilbertson, Wired, 2 June 2020
• Each set of three bases in DNA can designate one of the 20 canonical amino acids.
  — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 5 Oct. 2017
• And just as there’s no doubting the canonical impact of the album, the same can be said for its cover.
  — Zachary Lipez, Washington Post, 14 June 2019
• Each involves a new cast in a new bar, and over the course of the evening, unexpected twists on a canonical text emerge.
  — Nicole Blackwood, chicagotribune.com, 6 June 2019
• What are your feelings about when canonical works of art come to be defined by their moral flaws?
  — David Marchese David Marchesephotograph By Mamadi Doumbouya, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2022
• The archer keeps a canonical story-style log of our campaign, which at this point is hundreds of pages long.
  — L.j. Kilgore, Ars Technica, 28 June 2020
• As recent newcomers to the Bay Area taco scene have proven, the idea of there being a canonical way to make a taco is kind of bunk.
  — Soleil Ho, SFChronicle.com, 6 Jan. 2020
• The most canonical of them even spawn their own subgenres.
  — Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 11 Sep. 2022
• Aliens: Vasquez is set to explore the canonical background of Vasquez, as well as the story of the children she was forced to leave behind.
  — Clark Collis, EW.com, 24 Mar. 2022
• Books by white authors became the canonical ones framing race as a form of caste.
  — Gaiutra Bahadur, The New Republic, 25 Nov. 2020
• The days are past when the Whitney Biennial formed the canonical roundup of American art of the day.
  — New York Times, 23 Mar. 2022
• Although the show was a Broadway hit in 1976, the form didn’t become common, even as the text became canonical.
  — New York Times, 8 June 2022
• In the original, this canonical song is performed by Tony and Maria with all the teenage angst of an episode of Euphoria.
  — Erik Maza, Town & Country, 22 Feb. 2022
• Spock was unable to join Michael and the rest of the crew on that journey, if for no other reason than to preserve the canonical timeline.
  — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 8 Sep. 2020
• The canonical image of the Summer of Love may be most useful as a cautionary tale.
  — James Hamblin, The Atlantic, 19 Feb. 2021
• There are thoughts like that for many of the characters and especially the canonical ones.
  — Mike Fleming Jr, Deadline, 30 Aug. 2024
• The canonical Swadesh lists have between a hundred and two hundred and fifteen items.
  — Philip Ball, The New Yorker, 27 Apr. 2021
• Muse-ing doesn’t get much more canonical than that one-two shot, on top of the fact that her clothes on Richards’ frame secured him fashion status, too.
  — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2024
• Such nice things cannot be said for BananaDrama’s performance of the same now-canonical tune.
  — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 11 Feb. 2021
• The canonical menu: eggs every which way, pancakes, burgers and melts.
  — Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2022
• Think about the canonical moving pictures of the civil-rights movement.
  — Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic, 1 Apr. 2018
• The church, which claims Ukraine as part of its canonical territory, is closely aligned with the Kremlin.
  — James Marson, WSJ, 28 Jan. 2022
• Phillips and Silver deserve credit for going their own way with a canonical DC character.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Sep. 2024

Last Updated: 22 Oct 2024