Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use diction in a sentence

14 example sentences · noun

Diction means choice and use of words, especially with regard to effective communication; the effectiveness and degree of clarity of word choice and expression. Example: “His poor diction meant that most of the audience didn't really understand the key points of the presentation.”

Examples of diction by meaning

nounChoice and use of words, especially with regard to effective communication; the effectiveness and degree of clarity of...

  • the identification of the poetic impulse with sonorous diction
  • His poor diction meant that most of the audience didn't really understand the key points of the presentation.

More sentences with diction

  • This attack on Latinate diction, it should be noted, often took on an explicitly chauvinistic edge.2005, H. B. Nisbet, Claude Rawson, The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, volume 4, page 446. From the entry writation
  • Throughout the work, arcane diction such as "dimmen," "strangury," "collapsion," "scrute" abounds.2003, Alan Singer, Aesthetic Reason: Artworks and the Deliberative Ethos, University Park, P.A.: The Pennsylvania State University Press…. From the entry pseudoneologism
  • Teachers and students alike have chosen the purified and enriched over the old prejudice-encrusted diction.1975, The University bookman, a quarterly review - Volumes 16-20 - Page 59. From the entry personly
  • The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level.2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Jonathan Cape, page 31. From the entry Vietnamese
  • Her translations are dimmed over with a fug of late eighteenthcentury poetic diction, a striving for sublimity or for sentimental effect.2014, Robert Anthony Welch, The Cold of May Day Monday: An Approach to Irish Literary History, →ISBN. From the entry fug
  • The level of diction of the person in the street is usually different from that of a high churchperson.1999, Lewis Turco, The Book of Literary Terms. From the entry churchperson
  • "George Orwell put the easy use of words like 'unique' under the headings of 'pretentious diction' and overgeneralization.1995 July 7, Gary Houston, “Everything's Unique”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry overgeneralization
  • An essentially floral diction pregnates every sentence and every phrase, and the theme has been conveyed in a rigmarolic manner.1977, Diwan Kirpa Ram, Gulabnama of Diwan Kirpa Ram. From the entry rigmarolic
  • While remaining a speaker of a unique hyperlect, the Queen now employs a diction which is (comparatively) demotic when judged against earlier recordings.2003, Speaking English: Journal of the ESB (International).. From the entry hyperlect
  • Kathy Santen is full of bite as the bizarrely seduced Lady Anne, although her exaggerated diction is a bit too snappishly Shakespearean.1996 April 22, Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times. From the entry bite
  • The diction of some of the new poems has a hallowed, stained-glass simplicity that I don’t always like, and the poems themselves are like minor revisitings of earlier tropes.2014, Michael Hofmann, “Adam Zagajewski”, in Where Have You Been? Selected Essays, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, part…. From the entry celebratoriness
  • Then she found the sheet music for melodeclamation that she had taken from Russia , and that occasioned an explanation of the beauties of Russian diction .1996, John N. Kotre, Outliving the Self: How We Live on in Future Generations, John Kotre, →ISBN, page 129. From the entry melodeclamation

Meaning of diction

  1. noun Choice and use of words, especially with regard to effective communication; the effectiveness and degree of clarity of word choice and expression.
  2. noun Enunciation, pronunciation, or both.

Full definition of diction

Questions about diction in a sentence

How do you use diction in a sentence?
Diction is used as a noun. For example: “His poor diction meant that most of the audience didn't really understand the key points of the presentation.”
What is a short sentence with diction?
“the identification of the poetic impulse with sonorous diction”
What does diction mean?
Diction means choice and use of words, especially with regard to effective communication; the effectiveness and degree of clarity of word choice and expression.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: diction (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use diction in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/diction. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.