How to Use prurient in a Sentence

prurient

adjective
  • He took a prurient interest in her personal life.
  • But the main quibble has to do with Ivory’s memories of the prurient kind.
    John Tamny, Forbes, 26 Jan. 2022
  • Sleep under the stars on a warm late June night, and take it all in with a side of wanton, prurient sky candy.
    Heather Arndt Anderson, Sunset Magazine, 17 Jan. 2020
  • With not much to fill all those hours, many turned to prurient topics and became easy fodder for satire.
    Mark Kennedy, Star Tribune, 19 July 2021
  • And there is much to love about it beside its now tamely prurient aspects.
    Matthew J. Palm, orlandosentinel.com, 15 Oct. 2020
  • And yet, despite those taglines, and despite the title, the film isn’t a prurient cautionary tale about a girl gone wild.
    Vulture, 26 May 2022
  • The assumption at first is that the girls’ captor has prurient interests in mind.
    Michael O'Sullivan, The Denver Post, 20 Jan. 2017
  • But this year the interest is also a little more prurient.
    Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 6 Apr. 2022
  • But the story about the undersecretary and the African American train porters was simply too prurient to print.
    James Kirchick, Washington Post, 15 June 2022
  • Every time a plot feels corny or prurient or preachy, there’s an acknowledgment in the dialogue.
    Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, 23 Mar. 2017
  • Several of the names have brought prurient snickers from those with creatively immoral minds.
    Victor Mather, New York Times, 20 May 2016
  • So Beaulieu removed the tables and installed a counter to accommodate his more prurient patrons.
    Tim Carman, Washington Post, 3 July 2020
  • But part of the prurient thrill of reality TV is being invited to stay and see the squirmy interior lives of others.
    Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 5 Mar. 2022
  • But there was also a prurient little thrill to winning, no matter how undeserved.
    Krista Stevens, Longreads, 14 May 2024
  • The campaign learns of it, and the campaign pleads its case that the material is merely prurient and that publishing it would be gratuitous and not in the public interest.
    Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Carrington pleaded guilty to three counts of visual surveillance with prurient intent, court records show.
    Baltimore Sun Staff, baltimoresun.com, 4 Sep. 2019
  • The Snowman Boring and incoherent, this is a slow, dull, prurient film about a serial killer, going around severing the heads of female victims.
    Chronicle Staff Report, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Oct. 2017
  • Much of the reporting about Tipton was prurient, skeptical, and derisive.
    Richard Brod, The New Yorker, 16 July 2021
  • The movie should hit harder because a prurient party-fest with dark undertones of creeping irrelevance and impermanence seems ready-made to thrill us, if not move us.
    K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone, 23 Dec. 2022
  • So does Olympian Caster Semenya, whose biology has been the subject of prurient scrutiny.
    Washington Post, 6 Oct. 2019
  • The first prong asks if an average person, using community standards, would decide the work appeals to the prurient interest.
    Peter Greene, Forbes, 13 Feb. 2023
  • Both doctors took advantage of young women to satisfy their prurient desires.
    Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2022
  • The scene resembled the summoning of a cult leader, and the Dominican firebrand Tokischa, a rapper known for her prurient lyrics and high-profile collaborations, emerged onstage.
    New York Times, 13 Apr. 2022
  • But for some people, what begins as prurient curiosity eventually leads them to jail.
    Julia Scheeres, WIRED, 30 Sep. 2002
  • The gentle gorgeousness of the art nevertheless dilutes any prurient effect the exhibition might have.
    Peter Plagens, WSJ, 1 Dec. 2018
  • For the most part, though, this is a thoughtful look at a controversy unlikely to fade away, so long as modern technology and prurient interests continue to exist.
    Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Ever sensitive to Apple's prurient insinuations, Epic did not let slip the banana aside.
    Robert Hackett, Fortune, 11 May 2021
  • The defense objected to prurient details as prejudicial, and Justice Juan Merchan scolded her at least twice, telling her to stick to the questions asked and not meander down verbal alleyways.
    Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 May 2024
  • Still, a window into a famous person’s birth-to-death story may offer enormous and sometimes prurient satisfactions.
    Lauren Groff, The Atlantic, 14 Dec. 2022
  • As for the prurient line or two about Sonia, Orwell’s second wife, doing nude modeling for the painters of the Euston Road school, this is categorically denied by her biographer.
    D.j. Taylor, WSJ, 15 Dec. 2017

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