How to Use purgatorial in a Sentence

purgatorial

adjective

• And like there's an end in sight to our purgatorial existence.
  — Leora Yashari, refinery29.com, 6 Nov. 2020
• Here is the molten core of the series, the power source that’s too hot to truly touch: Ted is a figure of great pathology, a sloganeer drifting in a purgatorial state.
  — The New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2021
• If Clyde’s is clearly figured as purgatorial, glimpses of both the divine and the ordinary lie just beyond.
  — Naveen Kumar, Variety, 23 Nov. 2021
• Staring back at Ball was a proxy error notice, a gray message plastered against a screen of purgatorial white.
  — Benjamin Wofford, Vox, 25 Oct. 2018
• Dogs are, for some of us, a perfect balm for purgatorial anxieties.
  — Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 29 July 2021
• Much like the Kings themselves, Quick appears to be in a purgatorial transition phase, stuck somewhere between the prime and postmortem of his career.
  — Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct. 2019
• The closest concept the Jews have to limbo is Sheol, a place existing in a purgatorial realm between the poles of paradise and hell — much like, as some might say, the state of Israel itself.
  — Steve Stern, New York Times, 11 Sep. 2017
• Given how the episode starts with a fantasy, this special could entirely be Rue in a purgatorial state.
  — Marcus Jones, EW.com, 4 Dec. 2020
• Lopatin’s best songs build a space—uncanny, warped, almost purgatorial—in which various eras and ideas, both dead and alive, can speak to one another.
  — Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, 25 Sep. 2023
• The dust was high and the sun was low, but PillowTalk’s funky grooves attracted dancers at that purgatorial time of day when the energy lost after a day in the sun commingled with the urge to continue dancing.
  — Morena Duwe, Billboard, 7 Oct. 2019
• Mendes, for all the tony respectability of his work (give or take a multiplex outing for James Bond), relishes the misery of purgatorial lives.
  — A.a. Dowd, Chron, 8 Dec. 2022
• But that policy did not apply to thousands of concerts that had been bumped from their original dates but had no new ones — leaving the money fans spent on those shows in a purgatorial state.
  — Ben Sisario, New York Times, 25 Apr. 2020
• The room was like any other these days, with its neutral bedding, uncomfortable bouclé lounge chair, and wood-veneer accent wall—tasteful, but purgatorial.
  — Darran Anderson, The Atlantic, 24 Aug. 2020
• In the latter video, the singer, dancer and artist twigs also reaches upward toward a celestial, winged being before descending down a long pole into a purgatorial-like space.
  — Andrew R. Chow, Time, 29 Mar. 2021
• Entering his first season at the helm, McLellan had been looking for ways to break up the purgatorial eight-day break between his team’s preseason finale and regular-season lid-lifter.
  — Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2019
• For Bran, these qualities neutralize the place into a purgatorial zone.
  — New York Times, 17 May 2022
• This isn’t to say that the Dreamers’ current purgatorial position is acceptable.
  — Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, 22 Jan. 2018
• Repeat: liquid rock, in full purgatorial glow, inches below your feet.
  — New York Times, 18 Jan. 2018
• Burroughs was an ethereal intermediary between here and the fiery beyond, pausing to give us the purgatorial skinny.
  — Alexander C. Kafka, Houston Chronicle, 29 June 2019
• Banshees resembles the purgatorial tribalism and ethnic discontent that Spike Lee gets away with.
  — Armond White, National Review, 23 Dec. 2022
• As of October, members of Congress and business groups were already putting together political and legal strategies for salvaging the deal during the six-month purgatorial period.
  — Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, 11 Jan. 2018
• The book’s arid middle, set in Las Vegas, is one of its strongest sections: its expanse of sand and mosquitoes represents a purgatorial state that builds torturous suspense and fundamentally shapes Theo’s addictions and lawless streak.
  — Andrew R. Chow, Time, 13 Sep. 2019
• The purgatorial seating has a psychological effect on the service.
  — Bill Addison, latimes.com, 27 June 2019
• Willis’s slightly off-kilter body language and deliberate line readings give the protagonist a stilted quality that, on repeat viewings, seems entirely apt for a man who is repressing his own purgatorial loneliness.
  — Adam Nayman, The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2022
• This dangerous and purgatorial territory spans decades.
  — Harmony Holiday, Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2023

Last Updated: 17 Dec 2024