How to Use freak show in a Sentence

freak show

noun
  • While some members of the disability community see the Mütter as an offensive freak show, others see it as a place where people can learn about their rare conditions.
    Maura Judkis, Washington Post, 27 July 2023
  • If sports is a carnival, the A’s are the midway freak show.
    Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 May 2023
  • Pick your poison—a cult, a coven, a murder house, a freak show?
    Lauren Chval, RedEye Chicago, 30 Oct. 2017
  • Rick and Cliff have a front-row seat to the freak show that twisted the hippie ethos into a call for blood.
    Laura Demarco, cleveland.com, 24 July 2019
  • His era was an unprecedented freak show for the 450-foot home run.
    Tom Krasovic, sandiegouniontribune.com, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Indeed, Ballengée takes many steps to ensure that his project doesn’t amount to some kind of frog freak show.
    Kyle Hill, Discover Magazine, 8 Apr. 2014
  • At the wheel of this desert-racing, quasi-retro freak show is its proud papa, Jim Glickenhaus.
    Daniel Pund, Car and Driver, 15 Mar. 2020
  • The hawker is always full of pompous boasts — lies — and the freak show behind him is sad and disappointing.
    Anchorage Daily News, 28 Jan. 2018
  • The Wasilla grower is no stranger to the freak show that rolls out every year at the fair’s vegetable competitions.
    Zaz Hollander, Anchorage Daily News, 31 May 2020
  • That Trump-DeSantis freak show hasn’t fully taken off, at least not yet.
    Alex Thomas, The New Republic, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Now) Step right up for a pretty lip balm with a buildable brick-red tint in packaging that channels the old-timey freak shows of Coney Island.
    Meirav Devash, Allure, 6 Oct. 2017
  • Alabama’s freak show of an offense has the potential to be the best in the history of college football.
    Joseph Goodman | Jgoodman@al.com, al, 27 Aug. 2019
  • In other words, Bosa vs. Murray, a meeting that could be dubbed the freak show, has the potential to become a long-running, must-see series.
    Eric Branch, SFChronicle.com, 29 Oct. 2019
  • The artist now is trying to recapture his experiences as a boy in Long Beach, Calif., when circuses and freak shows came to town.
    Brenda Cronin, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2018
  • The thrill never dies Finding actors who could sing opera tinged with rock and fill out a freak show was an especially fun nightmare.
    Andrea Simakis, cleveland.com, 7 Jan. 2018
  • Hellzapoppin', which claims to be the world's largest touring freak show, is coming to Winter Park on Wednesday, June 27, bringing fire, swords and beds of nails.
    Trevor Fraser, OrlandoSentinel.com, 27 June 2018
  • Around a corner, a visitor comes face-to-face with artifacts from a freak show that was part of the Sells-Floto Circus a century ago.
    Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Conventions have always been these bizarre combinations of state fair, freak show, and prom.
    The Atlantic, 21 Aug. 2020
  • Based on a true story, the play is about a Mexican woman with excessive body hair and enlarged facial features who was sold to a freak show.
    Shannon Sutlief, Dallas News, 30 July 2020
  • The premise of freak show, that the fringe operated outside the normal workings of American politics, has decayed over the years.
    Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 23 Feb. 2018
  • To put it politely, American food television is a freak show.
    John Anderson, WSJ, 13 July 2017
  • Baartaman’s case, her large butt and dark skin made her the object of fascination by Europeans who painted her as a savage and freak show for profit.
    Mikeisha Vaughn, Essence, 2 Apr. 2020
  • Furthermore, the fourth season describes an American freak show and its struggle for survival.
    Toby Grey, BGR, 16 Sep. 2022
  • As Huang reveals, the twins were much more than a freak show spectacle — strivers, showmen and slaveholders who settled in rural North Carolina, country squires who loved to hunt and fish.
    Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 May 2018
  • In short, Minaya's tenure was very on brand given the Mets' perpetual status as one of baseball's more eccentric freak shows.
    Jon Tayler, SI.com, 22 Dec. 2017
  • That was the boy’s father, the monster of this midway, the snarling, glowering freak show who found some of his most honorable work at a traveling carnival in the Midwest, taking on all comers.
    Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The novel recounts the history and hardships of the Binewski clan, carnival folk whose pater- and materfamilias, Al and Crystal Lil, create their own freak show.
    Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Conservatives who are real conservatives don’t ape the social-justice left and make politics a daily freak show.
    Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 14 Dec. 2017
  • But Reeves’ movie, tilting into emo freak show with Robert Pattinson leading an impeccable cast, is so masterfully made.
    Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Dec. 2022
  • No one reading this publication is interested in the incredibly ugly, vile and vapid Kardashian pig turd and her circus freak show life.
    Nina Braca, Billboard, 5 Jan. 2018

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