How to Use otherness in a Sentence

otherness

noun
  • As an American growing up in Africa, I always felt a sense of otherness.
  • There is an otherness to Watanabe’s clothes, a removal from the norm.
    Alexander Fury, New York Times, 17 Oct. 2016
  • My feet have always struck me as my tell of otherness, even more than my nose or hair or weight.
    Savala Nolan, Harper's Magazine, 20 July 2021
  • Rountree brought out the extremes of such otherness in both.
    Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug. 2021
  • The shame of our fat bodies was not separate from the shame of our brownness or our otherness.
    Virgie Tovar, refinery29.com, 29 Mar. 2022
  • And, at times, those who are poor are treated as less than, and with an attitude of otherness.
    Lynnette Nicholas, Parents, 15 Dec. 2023
  • The scene puts the Yi family’s otherness front and center.
    Olivia Truffaut-Wong, refinery29.com, 26 Feb. 2021
  • Rowling’s tale of a place where otherness was accepted didn’t in the end include them.
    Claire Dederer, Vulture, 27 Apr. 2023
  • In all that, there's some deeper metaphor, no doubt, about otherness, and all the ways that love and shame can sublimate even our core beliefs.
    Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 7 Sep. 2022
  • And so if this show at least helps grease any of those scratchy hard feelings that people have about otherness, then that’s just one more step [forward].
    ELLE, 26 Mar. 2022
  • That sense of otherness as a child fostered a deep compassion and empathy for outsiders that shaped the rest of Dressen's life.
    Star Tribune, 22 Dec. 2020
  • How does Ciri’s emulation of Geralt prepare her to take on any foe or doom her to a life of otherness — or both?
    Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 17 Dec. 2021
  • Such policies nurtured what had long been a defining trait of the Lower 9th Ward: A strong sense of otherness, the bond forged by neglect from a city that moated it off.
    John Simerman, NOLA.com, 29 Aug. 2020
  • One of the things that felt very exciting to me was the older attitudes towards queerness and otherness.
    Zan Romanoff, Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2020
  • This ostracism, this otherness, is among the most distressing feelings that can be felt by our social species.
    Virginia Chamlee, Peoplemag, 30 June 2023
  • As the visuals flash back to a younger Chiu picking up takeout in a dingy Hong Kong eatery, the scene does little but emphasize Chiu’s otherness.
    Amanda Chen, The New Republic, 1 Dec. 2022
  • That otherness goes so far as theorizing that Pelosi and other Democrats are lizards.
    Anita Chabria, Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2022
  • The best of them seem touched by an otherness, an otherlandishness, of being.
    Jason Kehe, Wired, 21 Sep. 2020
  • To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people.
    Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 19 June 2024
  • In the film, Spielberg emphasizes the otherness of the recent immigrant.
    Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 10 Dec. 2021
  • Clearly around the world at the moment there are some people who are using hate to try to win support and are stirring up the concepts of 'difference' and 'otherness'.
    Kate Samuelson, Time, 22 May 2017
  • Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells, nor have their strengths, their skills, their swiftness, the beauty of their flights.
    Joy Williams, Harper’s Magazine , 28 Sep. 2022
  • Many of the writers delve into themes of otherness and immigration.
    Rebecca Aydin, chicagotribune.com, 12 July 2017
  • That, along with my feelings of otherness, is what instigated my search.
    Elle Decor Editors, ELLE Decor, 16 Nov. 2022
  • In choosing Patel, Iannucci makes manifest David’s sense of otherness, giving a depth to David’s desire to find his way in the world.
    Sean P. Means, The Salt Lake Tribune, 27 Aug. 2020
  • For Thompson, part of the joy of working with branches is that their otherness, their wild and alien nature and separateness from us, announces itself from the start.
    New York Times, 5 Mar. 2021
  • That hallway encounter was just part of a long history of people making sure redheads are well aware of their otherness.
    Jessica Matlin, Allure, 15 Feb. 2018
  • How did this girl—who is not only of color, but didn’t go to the same schools or universities as the royals, who wasn’t even raised in the U.K., and so has all these points of difference and otherness—get to this place?
    Afua Hirsch, Time, 17 May 2018
  • There was always an excuse—about money, or about otherness.
    Time, 16 Sep. 2022
  • The limitations of the human body may well be the Biennale’s true subject, but at this installment, the sixtieth since 1895, the explicit theme is otherness.
    Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 2 May 2024

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