How to Use doctrinaire in a Sentence
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One of the reasons for Maresz’s non-doctrinaire style may come from the breadth of his education.
—Russell Platt, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2017
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This is all moot now that Kennedy is gone, sure to be replaced by a more doctrinaire supporter of capital punishment.
—Dylan Matthews, Vox, 11 July 2018
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Mann isn’t a doctrinaire reviser of his previous work, someone who simply likes to futz.
—Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 15 May 2017
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The four day psyche-fest was a bonanza of seminars, from the doctrinaire to the esoteric, the practical to the political.
—Penelope Green, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2018
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Because of the way our population is distributed, Democrats can't afford to enforce the kind of doctrinaire purity that the tea party was so successful in policing.
—Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 26 Apr. 2017
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Krauthammer’s views weren’t always doctrinaire and sometimes cut across the political divide.
—Lukas I. Alpert, WSJ, 22 June 2018
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But running as a doctrinaire progressive with heavy-handed appeals to minorities, the young and unmarried women is a perilous strategy at best.
—Karl Rove, WSJ, 23 May 2018
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The Securitate enforced the doctrinaire policies of Ceausescu, including strict limits on the media, dissent and freedom of speech.
—Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 30 Sep. 2017
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Just as Johnson has alienated some Conservative moderates, Corbyn has lost the backing of some longtime Labour figures who are turned off by his doctrinaire approach.
—Washington Post, 10 Sep. 2019
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Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade.
—Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 7 Nov. 2019
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Political without being doctrinaire, Red Clocks expands the dimensions of our most pressing social debate.
—Ron Charles, Philly.com, 28 Jan. 2018
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Many conservative critics long for Benedict's more doctrinaire papacy and question his decision to resign.
—Fox News, 21 Sep. 2018
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The best-case scenario is another Mike Pompeo, a doctrinaire crusading conservative with a light resume and a very brown nose who has quietly expanded his State department portfolio beyond its normal scope.
—Adam Weinstein, The New Republic, 10 Sep. 2019
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Speaking of then and now, that party almost immediately split into warring factions, with a compromise-averse, more doctrinaire left wing challenged by more pragmatic moderates.
—Phil Primack, BostonGlobe.com, 14 June 2019
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Both Bolton and Pompeo replaced officials Trump regarded as overly doctrinaire in their foreign policy views, unwilling to cede to the isolationist or protectionist steps the President believes his voters want.
—Kevin Liptak, CNN, 10 Apr. 2018
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And both have been criticized by fundamentalist and other more conservative religious thinkers who accuse them of not hewing to the most stringently doctrinaire biblical literalism.
—Alex Johnson, NBC News, 2 Mar. 2018
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The less doctrinaire factions do still matter, however, as vehicles to support their leaders’ ambitions, argues Tobias Harris of Teneo Intelligence, a consultancy.
—The Economist, 19 Apr. 2018
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Many liberals correctly call Pence a doctrinaire conservative, particularly on gay rights and other social issues.
—The Tylt, cleveland.com, 19 Oct. 2017
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Many liberals correctly call Pence a doctrinaire conservative, particularly on gay rights and other social issues.
—Dana Milbank, The Mercury News, 7 June 2017
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His personal volatility aside, Donald Trump has governed as an almost doctrinaire conservative Republican.
—Jamelle Bouie, Slate Magazine, 11 Sep. 2017
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One of the reasons for Maresz’s non-doctrinaire style may come from the breadth of his education.
—Russell Platt, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2017
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This is all moot now that Kennedy is gone, sure to be replaced by a more doctrinaire supporter of capital punishment.
—Dylan Matthews, Vox, 11 July 2018
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Mann isn’t a doctrinaire reviser of his previous work, someone who simply likes to futz.
—Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 15 May 2017
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The four day psyche-fest was a bonanza of seminars, from the doctrinaire to the esoteric, the practical to the political.
—Penelope Green, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2018
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Because of the way our population is distributed, Democrats can't afford to enforce the kind of doctrinaire purity that the tea party was so successful in policing.
—Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 26 Apr. 2017
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Krauthammer’s views weren’t always doctrinaire and sometimes cut across the political divide.
—Lukas I. Alpert, WSJ, 22 June 2018
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But running as a doctrinaire progressive with heavy-handed appeals to minorities, the young and unmarried women is a perilous strategy at best.
—Karl Rove, WSJ, 23 May 2018
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The Securitate enforced the doctrinaire policies of Ceausescu, including strict limits on the media, dissent and freedom of speech.
—Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 30 Sep. 2017
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Just as Johnson has alienated some Conservative moderates, Corbyn has lost the backing of some longtime Labour figures who are turned off by his doctrinaire approach.
—Washington Post, 10 Sep. 2019
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Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade.
—Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 7 Nov. 2019
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Voters in the city want out of the suicide pact that is doctrinaire progressivism.
—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 17 June 2022
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Although much influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in all the best ways, Jahn was no doctrinaire modernist.
—Rick Kogan, chicagotribune.com, 16 Dec. 2021
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Here, too, Bennett chafed against more doctrinaire elements, Plesner said.
—Washington Post, 5 June 2021
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Unlike more doctrinaire filmmakers of the time, such as Stanley Kramer, Stevens never permits his film’s message to overtake its artistry.
—Peter Tonguette, WSJ, 29 July 2022
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Surely even the most doctrinaire musicologist would say just to aim in the general vicinity of the metronome markings.
—Scott Cantrell, Dallas News, 24 July 2020
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The problem is Oz hasn't always been a doctrinaire conservative.
—Joel Mathis, The Week, 11 Apr. 2022
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This is what Clem, returning to his family at the novel’s end, attempts to do: to think through problems, without being obsessive or doctrinaire.
—Maggie Doherty, The New Republic, 8 Oct. 2021
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The current president, Luis Arce, who was Mr. Morales’s economy minister, heads a coalition of social democrats and more doctrinaire leftists.
—New York Times, 16 Dec. 2021
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But the fanciful and the doctrinaire coexisted on the walls of Tehran—until Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf became mayor.
—Amir Ahmadi Arian, The New York Review of Books, 30 Sep. 2020
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Restoring competition to the tech marketplace should appeal to all but the most doctrinaire libertarians and of course the oligarchs themselves.
—Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 3 Oct. 2021
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Even so, enforcement by the government itself is sometimes less doctrinaire in practice than in theory.
—Rachel Donadio, The Atlantic, 22 Nov. 2021
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If personnel is policy, as the saying in Washington goes, the most doctrinaire progressives in the Democratic Party have to be getting a little concerned.
—W. James Antle Iii, Washington Examiner, 3 Dec. 2020
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After the war’s end, Bouteflika became foreign minister at just 25, at a time when Algeria was a model of doctrinaire socialism tethered to the Soviet Union.
—NBC News, 18 Sep. 2021
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Biden’s economic record is that of an internationalist—not a doctrinaire free-trader, but a free-trader nonetheless.
—Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 10 July 2020
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But most critics, especially in the establishment, came to respect Mr. Bullins as an artist who was both passionately true to his source material and nuanced enough in his vision to avoid becoming doctrinaire.
—New York Times, 16 Nov. 2021
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Few classes of creative people are as doctrinaire about dress as architects and interior designers.
—Jessica Iredale, Town & Country, 7 Apr. 2022
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In his commentaries, Dr. Nunberg touched on proper grammar and pronunciation, but his approach to language was more observant than doctrinaire.
—Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 14 Aug. 2020
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This is the crucial point, underscoring the scholarly refutation of the doctrinaire nonsense about the supposedly pro-slavery Revolution.
—Sean Wilentz, The New York Review of Books, 13 Jan. 2022
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Vance represents a more doctrinaire America Firstism, which in some ways is traditional Republican politics on steroids and in other ways departs from those traditions.
—The New Yorker, 3 May 2022
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Today’s left, with a few notable exceptions, appeals to a highly moralistic conception of social justice and doctrinaire equality.
—Daniel J. Mahoney, National Review, 23 Sep. 2020
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French female filmmakers differ from their American counterparts, seeming less defensive, less doctrinaire, and not at all misandrist.
—Armond White, National Review, 27 Aug. 2021
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Such doctrinaire assumptions would exclude three quarters of world literature.
—Wisława Szymborska, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2021
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Her philosophy is less doctrinaire and more emotionally nuanced.
—Marisa Meltzer, WSJ, 15 June 2021
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This leads me to believe that Barrett would follow her legal conscience instead of allowing political considerations or a doctrinaire adherence to stare decisis to guide her decision-making process.
—Isaac Schorr, National Review, 6 Oct. 2020
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But while the doctrinaire emphasis on originality began to soften in the late Seventies, Rosner’s experience with the academic music world had taken a toll on his aspirations as well as on his personality, which already tended toward orneriness.
—Walter Simmons, Harper's Magazine, 25 May 2021
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Once Claire and Eric consummate their relationship, the series becomes much more doctrinaire, backing away from the subtler aspects of their connection: bonding over family history, Eric’s vulnerable economic position.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 7 Dec. 2020
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The pope's rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis' more progressive bent and still nostalgic for Benedict's doctrinaire papacy.
—Nicole Winfield, Star Tribune, 16 July 2021
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The pope's rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis’ more progressive bent and nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrinaire papacy.
—Fox News, 16 July 2021
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Voters in the city want out of the suicide pact that is doctrinaire progressivism.
—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 17 June 2022
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Although much influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in all the best ways, Jahn was no doctrinaire modernist.
—Rick Kogan, chicagotribune.com, 16 Dec. 2021
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'doctrinaire.' 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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