How to Use sadism in a Sentence

sadism

noun

• Filled with gore and sadism, the film flouted censorship while presenting a monster from another world smashing into the heart of civilization.
  — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 17 Apr. 2024
• Yet little in his life story would suggest the sadism of those acts.
  — latimes.com, 27 Apr. 2018
• The acronym BDSM stands for bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism.
  — Michael Tarm, The Seattle Times, 2 July 2017
• The sadism glitch didn’t keep Minaj from being the unquestioned winner of the telecast.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 29 Aug. 2022
• And as bad as von Trier's playful sadism may be, his defensive pedantry may be even worse.
  — Justin Chang, latimes.com, 15 May 2018
• What was new about the Jacobins was a deliberate, gloating sadism that is still shocking to read about.
  — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 2021
• This combination of elitism and sadism is distinct to Fincher, as is his puke-and-urine color scheme.
  — Armond White, National Review, 17 Nov. 2023
• The Purge: Anarchy (2014) took viewers out into city to get a better gauge of the widespread sadism sweeping the nation.
  — refinery29.com, 3 July 2018
• Certain moments drift into sadism (there’s some ugly knife work), though this is also part of the genre handbook.
  — Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2020
• But this can also sound like a nonviolent (and still extremely painful) form of sadism.
  — New York Times, 18 Mar. 2022
• Laaksonen included scenes of kink and bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism in his work.
  — R. Daniel Foster, Los Angeles Times, 2 Oct. 2019
• The show portrays Lydia’s sadism but doesn’t really seem to comprehend it.
  — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 13 July 2019
• His lament that Hurricane Maria has derailed the federal budget dressed his sadism up in cool, Olympian judgment.
  — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 13 Oct. 2017
• If her female characters had ever seemed to lack agency, here was the compelling context: male sadism.
  — Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2019
• Eroticism and sadism abound here between the characters, and the film includes a variety of explicit scenes.
  — Katherine J Igoe, Marie Claire, 1 Oct. 2021
• In 2004, revelations of torture and sadism at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq prompted shock and anger both domestically and abroad.
  — Lucien Bruggeman, ABC News, 8 Sep. 2021
• BDSM is an acronym that stands for any or all of the following: bondage and discipline; dominance and submission; sadism and masochism.
  — Rose Surnow, Cosmopolitan, 18 Nov. 2016
• To the sadism of white America, Davis contrasts the Native reverence for living creatures.
  — Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic, 15 Feb. 2022
• In humans, Rorschach inkblots might help to ferret out a killer by coaxing out hints of anger or sadism — emotions that might motivate someone to commit heinous acts.
  — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 7 June 2018
• Compelling him to testify would be not thoroughness but sadism.
  — Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 23 Jan. 2020
• As viscerally upsetting as that opening scene is, The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t traffic in sadism for its own sake.
  — Emma Dibdin, Harper's BAZAAR, 25 Apr. 2018
• There’s always been a steely, sinister edge to Connery’s screen presence, a hint of sadism beneath all his beauty, wit and physical grace.
  — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2020
• Whatever the reason for the too-heavy dose — accident, hands shaking, sadism — there is no visual difference between that dose and a light one.
  — Jesse Barron, New York Times, 16 Sep. 2020
• The expedient relations between empathy and sadism, the possibility that the two words might name the same feeling, is a large theme in the book.
  — Hannah Gold, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
• McCoy is certain that the victims’ deaths can be traced to the door of the richest family in Glasgow—whose ice-cold patriarch and his wastrel son are rumored to host orgies laced with drugs and sadism.
  — Tom Nolan, WSJ, 4 May 2018
• The brothers also understood the weirdly seductive sadism of restaurant service in Paris and carried it over to the hotel—to the consternation of many, and the delight of some.
  — Alexandra Marshall, Travel + Leisure, 10 July 2021
• The acronym stands for bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism.
  — Dominique Fluker, Essence, 7 Sep. 2023
• The film luxuriates in her suffering, not out of some sense of sadism, but out of a sense that there’s a magnificence to all big emotions, even the ones that accompany pain.
  — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 12 Mar. 2021
• And some of those eyes may also have seen what seems unmistakable today, an eroticized image of female bondage, a queasy mix of sympathy and sadism.
  — New York Times, 10 Mar. 2022
• The images have swept across newspapers and social media, hard evidence of Russian sadism.
  — Sophie Pinkham, The New York Review of Books, 16 Nov. 2023

Last Updated: 7 Sep 2024