How to Use folktale in a Sentence

folktale

noun
  • West African folktales that continue to be passed from generation to generation through storytelling.
  • That fact is, by folktale and firm record, key to the Juneteenth story.
    Janell Ross, Time, 16 June 2021
  • The folktale is one of the first stories Chinese children learn about in school.
    Michelle Tchea, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 June 2024
  • The Grimms had not intended to publish a book of folktales.
    National Geographic, 24 Sep. 2019
  • Bigfoot is not merely a folktale but a way of life in these areas.
    Haadiza Ogwude, The Enquirer, 6 Aug. 2022
  • The image seemed to illustrate a folktale just out of the reach of memory.
    Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 22 Feb. 2021
  • In the folktale, a powerful black steel-driving man named John Henry challenges the steam drill to a race, beats it, and dies.
    Tom Maxwell, Longreads, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Like the soup in the folktale, this recipe can be made with whatever bounty of vegetables comes your way.
    Ben Fogel, Sunset Magazine, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The origin story of Knuckleheads reads kind of like a folktale.
    Aaron Rhodes, Rolling Stone, 9 June 2021
  • UFOs have been part of the state's folktales for a long time, with some of the most infamous ones making headlines and video highlights across the nation.
    Laura Daniella Sepulveda, The Arizona Republic, 17 Feb. 2024
  • Still, the folktale remained part of European culture, coming in and out of the zeitgeist.
    Roy Schwartz, CNN, 21 Dec. 2021
  • This is the austere premise of the game, based on a folktale involving the 12th-century German king Barbarossa.
    Lewis Gordon, Wired, 15 Dec. 2020
  • Similar themes run through the myths and folktales of hunter-gatherer societies around the world.
    Ferris Jabr, Harper's magazine, 10 Mar. 2019
  • In our storytelling structure — look at our folktales and the way my grandma would tell it — one little story can take hours to tell.
    Thinus Ferreira, Variety, 28 Feb. 2024
  • Season of the Witch is a weird ’80s gem, a mix of folktale and high-tech horror about a company selling haunted children’s masks.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2021
  • The game, which was meant to depict the evil of such owners, spread like a folktale, adopted by communities who tweaked the rules to suit their tastes and circumstances.
    Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023
  • In a Cambodian children’s folktale, one man is afraid of lawyers and another is afraid of filth.
    Allyssa McCabe, The Conversation, 26 June 2023
  • It's inspired by Scottish folktales and feels like a modern classic.
    USA TODAY, 28 June 2023
  • Over a 40-year span, seven editions of the folktale collection were published.
    National Geographic, 24 Sep. 2019
  • Just like the faeries of ancient folktale, the inhabitants pay an annual toll of sacrifice, and no one must speak of it.
    Tom Shippey, WSJ, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Perhaps these wounds might even compel a young woman to retreat into folktales, to rewrite odes of the distant past.
    Hua Hsu, The New Yorker, 30 Dec. 2019
  • In one activity, a mentor tells an African folktale to a student.
    Erika Page, The Christian Science Monitor, 23 Feb. 2022
  • Silvia is entranced by the stories of her aunt Ena, who offers folktales of her home and their past, one that her mother has kept swathed in secrecy.
    Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 19 Mar. 2024
  • Typing: People with and without Parkinson's were asked to listen to a folktale and transcribe it by typing.
    Anne Pycha, Scientific American, 29 May 2017
  • Typing: People with and without Parkinson's were asked to listen to a folktale and transcribe it by typing.
    Anne Pycha, Scientific American, 1 June 2017
  • The piece looks at birth, transformation, and death through an Azerbaijani folktale.
    Peter Dobrin, Philly.com, 6 June 2018
  • In African culture, there is a long tradition of teaching through folktales that have animals at the center.
    Eben Shapiro, Time, 17 May 2018
  • The order of the animals in the Chinese zodiac comes from an ancient folktale with many variations and myths.
    Frances Lee, Woman's Day, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Like most myths, legends, and folktales, the story of El Cuco is a really, really old one.
    Gina Vaynshteyn, refinery29.com, 12 Jan. 2020
  • Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor has never been so silly as in this slapstick variation of the folktale about a bow-bearing noble bandit.
    Sarah Pfledderer, Pacific San Diego Magazine, 28 June 2017

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