How to Use totemic in a Sentence
totemic
adjective-
As a totemic figure of doom, though, Donahue fills the bill.
—Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register, 29 Jan. 2017
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The point of the new biopic mode was to reveal totemic figures in a more complex way.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 8 Feb. 2024
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The days of the totemic home phone number are vanishing.
—Eric Zorn, chicagotribune.com, 1 Dec. 2020
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Gone is the idea of a totemic strand of DNA that extends 6 feet when uncoiled and stretched out in a straight line.
—Elie Dolgin, BostonGlobe.com, 10 May 2023
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One piece, the totemic Big Lamp, combines marble and stone in the base, while a textured palm-fiber shade brings softness to the form.
—Rachel Gallaher, Robb Report, 25 Feb. 2024
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But Ludwig Göransson’s Oppenheimer score feels like the most totemic of the bunch.
—Nate Jones, Vulture, 4 Jan. 2024
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For You—the totemic pounding drums, the shout-it-out-loud anthemic choruses, and yeah: those guitars.
—Liam Hess, Vogue, 23 Oct. 2023
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Chances that growth will slow further, or the yuan will sink below the totemic level of seven to the dollar—or both—are rising.
—Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, 10 June 2019
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The last few years have not been easy for the totemic figures of American history, caught in the crossfire of our culture wars.
—Washington Post, 15 Apr. 2022
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And there is the Instagram phenomenon of certain white ones taking on the totemic allure of the Parthenon.
—Julie Lasky, ELLE Decor, 27 Apr. 2022
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The Olympics have been delayed, and the same increasingly likely to happen to Johnson's own totemic project.
—Edward Evans, Bloomberg.com, 10 May 2020
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But this is not at all the Bergé known in France, where the collector and businessman is a towering, even totemic, figure.
—James McAuley, Town & Country, 8 Sep. 2017
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That cycle will now take place in five programs over the coming months, with most of these totemic works preceded by shorter new pieces.
—New York Times, 7 Oct. 2021
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In turn, this letter attracted protest from some younger party members, for whom trans rights are totemic.
—The Economist, 5 July 2018
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The books themselves resemble, as much as anything, the totemic novels of the midcentury.
—Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 7 Dec. 2021
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The Trib was known as a writer’s paper, and while there Wolfe made forays beyond totemic somnambulism.
—Ben Yagoda, WSJ, 18 May 2018
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In a break in play, Dalic summoned Modric, Croatia’s totemic captain, to the sideline.
—Rory Smith, New York Times, 13 Dec. 2022
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One gallery sporting dozens of small works perched on steel pedestals evokes everything from Picasso to Brancusi to the totemic forms of ancient cultures.
—BostonGlobe.com, 13 May 2021
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Through Hsiung’s camera, its components become totemic, almost erotic: the tapered neck of the artichoke, the smooth flesh of the fish.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2021
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Wandsworth and Westminster, two totemic Tory councils, did not fall, despite Labour’s noisy campaigns in both.
—The Economist, 4 May 2018
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So wrote Henry David Thoreau, famously, in Walden, the totemic 19th-century ode to downscale, off-the-grid living.
—Tom Vanderbilt, Outside Online, 28 Mar. 2023
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The repeal of that provision has been a totemic issue to Hindu nationalists for decades.
—The Economist, 9 Aug. 2019
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And Haley, knowing its totemic importance to Tyler also, runs off with it —this sacred object.
—Kate Aurthur, Variety, 13 Jan. 2022
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Such was its totemic power that a more inclusive version of the three words — all lives matter — was considered a dangerous heresy.
—Rich Lowry, National Review, 22 Feb. 2022
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Adjacent to the pavilion are six totemic sculptures: 10-foot tall railroad frogs cast in manganese steel anchored upright.
—R. Daniel Foster, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2023
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At the same time, the project has totemic significance in Australia as a proxy for the fight between environmentalists and coal miners.
—Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2019
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The Last Dance underscores that Jordan was one of the last truly monocultural figures of the pre-internet era, totemic and inscrutable.
—Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 24 Apr. 2020
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In the conversation of my parents and their theater-going friends, Hecht popped up as a familiar, almost totemic presence.
—Geoffrey O’Brien, The New York Review of Books, 18 Apr. 2019
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Two mighty mahogany doors (salvaged from Trout’s father’s home, lost after Hurricane Harvey), act as totemic portals to the chic wine atelier.
—Greg Morago, Houston Chronicle, 17 Jan. 2020
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The stethoscope, medicine’s most totemic object, had faced similar obstacles.
—Clifford Marks, The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2023
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'totemic.' 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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