How to Use navel-gazing in a Sentence

navel-gazing

noun
  • To debate grand strategy is to indulge in navel-gazing while the world burns.
    Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Affairs, 13 Apr. 2020
  • In that sense, turning the camera back on one’s self shouldn’t qualify as navel-gazing.
    Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 26 May 2024
  • This is a coach who can’t see far enough past his own nose to understand that in moments of defeat, a coach’s sole job isn’t navel-gazing.
    Los Angeles Times, 24 Nov. 2023
  • But the voiceovers also feel like lumps of prose in a film too busy navel-gazing to build narrative shape or momentum.
    David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Feb. 2024
  • The policy navel-gazing is centering around three debates.
    Jana Randow, Fortune, 22 Oct. 2023
  • It should be noted that there was plenty of navel-gazing and hand-wringing by the fashion press when the Pharrell news broke, but in a way, his appointment is simply the evolution of a narrative going back 100 years or more.
    Max Berlinger, Robb Report, 13 Aug. 2023
  • Self-reliance was encouraged, but not introspection (navel-gazing, ugh).
    Sigrid Nunez, Harper's Magazine, 16 Oct. 2023
  • This persistent reliance on navel-gazing is annoying, and with everything being so on the surface, there’s no urgency whatsoever to the story.
    Jordan Hoffman, EW.com, 23 July 2024
  • Plenty of people saw these films, and their teeth were set on edge by the cultural homogeneity, the navel-gazing conversations, the unremarkable visual palate, or the nonchalant performances contained therein.
    Vikram Murthi, IndieWire, 14 Aug. 2024
  • Critics sometimes derisively describe it as navel-gazing.
    Andrea Kane, CNN, 9 June 2024
  • Claims that a political gerontocracy is somehow undermining American democracy — the theme of so much political navel-gazing — simply don’t hold water.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2023

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