How to Use dutiful in a Sentence

dutiful

adjective

• She’s the dutiful wife at home, but seething with anger the moment Kevin leaves the room.
  — Morgan Baila, refinery29.com, 23 June 2021
• William, 40, is the heir, a dutiful second to their father, the new king.
  — William Booth, Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2022
• William has to spend the rest of his life being cautious, dutiful, and dull.
  — Sarah Lyall, Town & Country, 8 Jan. 2013
• When a runner came by, Hal and I would get back to being dutiful.
  — Devin Kelly, Longreads, 19 Jan. 2022
• But this, frankly, gets short shrift, and feels more dutiful than inspired.
  — David Treuer, The New York Review of Books, 17 Nov. 2020
• Being seen as such—and pious and dutiful to boot—was what gave them the license to speak in public and to write.
  — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
• When the work feels dutiful, there’s less incentive to suit up.
  — Sean Gregory, Time, 11 Sep. 2019
• Doesn't all the post-Awards show commentary just feel sort of dutiful compared to the tizzy over the First Lady's bangs?
  — Sarah Smith, Redbook, 22 Jan. 2013
• Michael is the dutiful son who works day and night to provide for his family.
  — Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2024
• Lake has served as a dutiful mouthpiece for Trump's false claims of election fraud.
  — Brigid Kennedy, The Week, 8 Aug. 2022
• The rest of it, the dutiful search, too often disappoints.
  — Clare Sestanovich, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
• Lawrence is his dutiful wife who spends her time rehabbing the old house.
  — Michael Heaton, cleveland.com, 15 Sep. 2017
• Through that last scene in the zoo in Pondicherry, where the goat gets brought on and shoved in the tiger cage, the puppeteer’s doing a dutiful job of keeping the body and the head attached.
  — Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times, 21 Mar. 2023
• Now the store was empty, the dutiful manager at his post, behind the counter.
  — New York Times, 25 Jan. 2022
• After all, Daphne was fairly bland at the beginning of her courtship with the Duke, all doe eyes and dutiful smiles.
  — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 24 Mar. 2022
• Playing the doting, dutiful partner to the wrong person in hopes of changing them is a canon event.
  — Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 20 Feb. 2024
• So many dutiful Bills fans showed up on Friday that lines snaked around the stadium for hours.
  — Jalen Wright, New York Times, 20 Jan. 2024
• Kate, seeing the Queen, gave her mother-in-law a dutiful curtsy.
  — Chloe Foussianes, Town & Country, 26 Dec. 2019
• This won’t come as a surprise to fans of Game of Thrones, the show that features the 38-year-old actor as the dutiful and fearless warrior Brienne of Tarth.
  — Tufayel Ahmed, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 July 2017
• For starters there’s Troy’s wife, Rose (Greta Oglesby), the dutiful spouse who loves her man despite his faults.
  — Robert W. Butler, kansascity, 21 Oct. 2017
• These are some of the few scenes in which the director loosens up and sheds the dutiful posture that can come from adapting a canonical text.
  — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Aug. 2024
• Warda has made in becoming the dutiful wife of a man in prison are nothing in Amira’s eyes.
  — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 28 Oct. 2021
• His stiff, dutiful portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, the grand master of the order, hangs in the Louvre.
  — Teju Cole, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2020
• The remark flung a hundred and one stereotypes about meek, dutiful, robotic Asian men out the window.
  — Inkoo Kang, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Feb. 2020
• Greene was in the birthing room when Oliver was born and spent the early years changing diapers and being a dutiful dad.
  — Linda Marx, PEOPLE.com, 23 July 2021
• Even after all these years on the same show, there’s nothing about their energy that feels dutiful.
  — James Hibberd, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Aug. 2024
• While most comments were about pet cats, some of the felines killed were part of colonies being looked after by dutiful locals.
  — Christopher Harress | [e-mail], al, 23 Oct. 2019
• For years, the public works director was the city’s cleanup man and dutiful caretaker.
  — Jason W. Lloren, SFChronicle.com, 3 Feb. 2020
• The story itself has no sense of stakes or resonance, and the actors vary in affect from lifeless to dutiful to pained.
  — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2022
• Ralph Fiennes does most of the heavy lifting, playing a dutiful and doubting man overseeing the vote.
  — Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times, 12 Sep. 2024

Last Updated: 17 Dec 2024