How to Use exegesis in a Sentence

exegesis

noun
  • Puxley’s exegesis, the model on the cover, the clothes, the camp, even Roxy’s name (both a pun and a salute to old cinemas) were all part of an artistic package of which the music was only a part.
    Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 1 Jan. 2023
  • Rabbis have always loved acronyms, and collectively these four main types of exegesis are known as פרדס, Pardes.
    Talia Lavin, The New Republic, 13 Feb. 2020
  • The pace of exegesis is at all times unhurried; Mr. Osborne is intent on telling us everything.
    Joseph Horowitz, WSJ, 23 Aug. 2018
  • Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, devotes an entire chapter of his new book to a detailed exegesis of why Cruz is so deeply despised.
    Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 11 July 2017
  • The Russians soon became for progressives the exegesis of why Hillary lost, rather than her anemic campaign or near-toxic persona.
    Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 17 Dec. 2019
  • Dean Baquet, the executive editor, will retire in a few years, and Mr. Smith offered a lengthy exegesis on who might succeed him.
    Edmund Lee, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2020
  • With all respect to any rabid Fall fan, Smith’s voice really does demand a little exegesis.
    Washington Post, 16 July 2021
  • Her approach comes out of the early online communities that sprang up around shows, where fans could kibitz and argue, exchanging detailed exegeses of episodes and (back then) bootleg videotapes.
    Jennifer Szalai, New York Times, 3 July 2019
  • He has also, it should be pointed out, been incredibly keen to throw in all manner of curveballs to confuse and confound the extraordinary levels of exegesis that have been applied to his work.
    Eamonn Forde, Forbes, 13 May 2021
  • In the end, Ms. Okpokwasili’s often academic-sounding exegeses of her work become repetitive.
    Glenn Kenny, New York Times, 11 July 2017
  • This entire episode is about reading and interpreting, knowing and not knowing: This jacket’s brief message has drawn us all into the task of exegesis — the critical explanation of a text.
    Rhonda Garelick, The Cut, 22 June 2018
  • People fill up message boards and YouTube videos and multipart critical exegeses with their thoughts on Primer, picking up on each abyssal clue, building on one another’s discoveries.
    Brian Raftery, WIRED, 19 Mar. 2013
  • There is an exegesis on brainwashing and transcriptions of psychotherapy sessions; there are echoes and doublings.
    David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 14 Jan. 2022
  • One of them composed elaborate critical exegeses for thirty imaginary microfictions; based on these, the other wrote the stories themselves.
    Luc Sante, Harper's magazine, 10 Jan. 2019
  • Mr. Spiegelman’s exegesis of Pound’s poem is masterful, a literary analysis all college freshman should read and learn from.
    WSJ, 19 Jan. 2017
  • While Richards’ interpretations of poems tend to be cranky and elliptical, the models of careful exegesis supplied by New Critics were designed to show newcomers to literature how it might be done.
    Timothy Aubry, New Republic, 12 Oct. 2017
  • The dizzying range of musical talent among this year’s three Pulitzer finalists—from Yun’s eerie precision and Fure’s snarling intensity to Soper’s philosophical exegeses—should be treated not as a victory but as a clarion call.
    William Robin, The New Yorker, 13 Apr. 2017
  • The New Orleans native has written a hybrid of the most exquisite kind, part family history, part archaeological dig, part self-exegesis.
    Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post, 30 July 2019
  • There are reams of books and entire universities dedicated to promoting this exegesis.
    Sarah Jones, The New Republic, 7 June 2018
  • In contrast to the letters, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, some 3,000 pages of notes, are more sustained bursts of political reflection, the disentanglement and exegesis of which is today a major scholarly industry.
    Thomas Meaney, The New Republic, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Segal has brought together here odds and ends from a writing life: short stories, short essays, biblical exegesis, as well as selections from her novels, making it a fitting bookend to a long career and an excellent introduction to her work.
    Madeleine Schwartz, Harper's magazine, 10 June 2019
  • Each individual essay in this collection is complex, requiring an exegesis beyond what the scope of a single book review can handle, but certain moments stand out to me as impossible not to highlight.
    Jennifer Wilson, The New Republic, 22 Sep. 2021
  • What has been excised from this new edition is Shelton’s album-by-album commentary, and the lengthy exegesis on Dylan as poet, which drew extensively on the emerging field of Dylan studies taking root on American campuses during the seventies.
    Billboard Staff, Billboard, 24 May 2021
  • Patristic exegesis comprises all the more or less allegorical methods by which St. Augustine and other church fathers interpreted the Bible.
    Washington Post, 25 Aug. 2021
  • That the television shows were perfectly comprehensible and didn’t require much actual exegesis didn’t matter, because people clicked anyway.
    Christian Lorentzen, Harper's magazine, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Such a body of writing more closely resembles Talmudic exegesis than literary criticism.
    Alex Traub, New York Times, 8 June 2021
  • How this works — and how the book’s characteristic style of accessible, philosophical exegesis proceeds — can be seen in Scruton’s discussion of the Christian symbolism and ritual that permeates Parsifal.
    Barnaby Crowcroft, National Review, 26 Dec. 2020
  • Some political-theological exegesis would be required to unspool the nature of the accomplishment.
    Thomas Meaneeey, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2020
  • Saskia Hamilton, who teaches at Barnard and helped assemble the two previous volumes of Lowell letters, approaches the particulars here with deep knowledge and occasionally overexcited exegesis.
    Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2019
  • In such a widening gyre, Mounk’s calm mix of storytelling, political theory and social psychology exegesis, peppered with some charming insights, has a comforting seriousness.
    Washington Post, 29 Apr. 2022

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