Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use documentary in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Documentary means of, related to, or based on documents. Example: “I was mostly unfamiliar with the nautical terms used in the sailing documentary.”

Examples of documentary by meaning

adjectivePresented objectively without the insertion of fictional matter.

  • a documentary film
  • Just as there is a tradition of history painting, so there is one of history photographs — which of course are not documentary.1982 February 6, Martin Krieger, “Stark/Erotic”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 28, page 10

nounA film, TV program, publication etc. which presents a social, political, scientific or historical subject in a factual...

  • Fifteen documentaries are in sharp-elbowed competition to be among the five Oscar nominees.2014 December 4, Brooks Barnes, Michael Cieply, “Documentaries Jostle Against Oscar Obscurity”, in The New York Times, retrieved 28 Jun 2015
  • But most big documentaries these days aren’t documentaries any more in the way previous practitioners of the craft might have understood the word.2026 January 20, Marina Hyde, “It’s a Brooklyn v Beckham Inc disaster: what happens when the elephant in the room goes rogue”, in The...

nounSuch works collectively, as a genre.

  • Such sequences draw attention to the affective appeals that environmental documentary typically makes, precisely by absenting those appeals.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 61

More sentences with documentary

  • I was mostly unfamiliar with the nautical terms used in the sailing documentary.From the entry nautical
  • The documentary will narrate the rise and fall of the historic club.From the entry narrate
  • A year in the making, the following is the definitive documentary on the issue.From the entry in the making
  • The music in the documentary is only used diegetically: there is no soundtrack.From the entry diegetically
  • They saw an eye-opening documentary on the societal costs of cheap clothing production; there are many externalities.From the entry eye-opening
  • I've been thinking about human rights since watching that documentary.From the entry think about
  • The documentary effectively juxtaposes the lives of two rival politicians.From the entry juxtapose
  • His calm narration made the documentary easy to follow.From the entry narration
  • The controversial documentary was uncarried by most TV networks.From the entry uncarried
  • Rennie was interviewed in the VICE News Tonight documentary, Beyond Fentanyl, about his addiction to benzo dope.2023 May 4, Manisha Krishnan, “Man Arrested After Opening Heroin, Cocaine, and Meth Store in Canada”, in Vice. From the entry benzo
  • Besides singing, he said he also likes watching documentaries on state television and studying voice dubbing.2020 December 3, Mandy Zuo, “Chinese farmer becomes online star for his stunning poem recital”, in South China Morning Post, →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry Longhua
  • Berlinger added that there is a risk in documentaries that are overcomposed.2015 June 26, Ben Kenigsberg, “Documentary Filmmakers Talk About Manipulation in Their Work”, in New York Times. From the entry overcomposed
  • After the building was completed, a documentary film represented the massing as a series of sugarcube-like boxes.2014, James Stewart Polshek, Build, Memory, New York, N.Y.: The Monacelli Press, →ISBN, page 32. From the entry sugarcube
  • The quizzacious Cousineau has also written or co-written eighteen documentary films and contributed to forty-two other books.2012, Phil Cousineau, The Painted Word. From the entry quizzacious
  • A more conventional idea of war work formed the basis of much women's documentary writing.2012, M. Joannou, The History of British Women's Writing, 1920-1945, →ISBN. From the entry war work
  • Nevertheless, even the tangas issued under Iskandar Khan are referred to in documentary sources as 'pure'.2003, Ahmad Hasan Dani, Vadim Mikhaĭlovich Masson, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, →ISBN. From the entry tanga
  • Although television can deal brilliantly with such figures in documentary form, its current tone is anti-introvert.2001 April 1, “Watch with amazement”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 May 2024. From the entry ladettishness
  • The most challenging documentary discoveries were made by a tenacious archival ferret, Dr Antonio Bertoletti.1998 July 2, Charles Nicholl, “Screaming in the Castle”, in London Review of Books, volume XX, number 13. From the entry ferret
  • In this field, documentary might do much to deparochialise some of our common ways of thought.1998, Ian Aitken, The documentary film movement: an anthology, page 112. From the entry deparochialise
  • Bikel's earlier documentaries were light on credentials and heavy on incredibility.1995 October 24, Walter Goodman, “TELEVISION REVIEW;Who Programmed Mary? Could It Be Satan?”, in The New York Times. From the entry incredibility
  • But amid the release of a new documentary involving her parents, George and Cindy, could she be retried?2024 January 11, Daisy Phillipson, “The Lie Detector Test: Can Casey Anthony be tried again?”, in Dexerto. From the entry retry
  • Both Caleb and I were regular "soundtrackers"; we did soundtracks for documentaries, along with other kinds of accompaniment work.2024, Scott MacDonald, Comprehending Cinema, page 509. From the entry soundtracker
  • About a year before the pandemic entered the chat, I got an invitation to participate in a documentary.2022 February 14, Tressie McMillan Cottom, “We Weren't Wrong to Love 'The Cosby Show'”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New…. From the entry enter the chat
  • He also indisperses documentary footage from the Spanish Civil War, the Russian struggle in World War II and the Russian post-war.2022, Nancy J. Membrez, Eliseo Subiela in Life and Cinema: The Persistence of Vision, page 73. From the entry indisperse
  • Documentary filmmaker Cristina Ibarra is among the 25 fellows.2021 September 28, Amir Vera, “An anti-racist author, a documentary filmmaker and a computational virologist are among the 2021 MacArthur…. From the entry IMDB
  • You're as interesting as a documentary on dirt.2021, A. J. Adams, Twisted, page 330. From the entry bore off
  • The trailer for the documentary about killer Luka Magnotta doesn’t show anything graphic, but it contains clips of him handling kittens.2020 February 6, Alicia Lee, “Netflix is finally letting you stop previews from automatically playing. Here’s how to do it”, in CNN…. From the entry abuse
  • There is, for example, a thread discussing whether Joey, in the Vice documentary mentioned in my introduction, is a truecel.2019, Thea Høiland, "Incels and the stories they tell: A narrative analysis of Incels’ shared stories on Reddit", thesis submitted to the…. From the entry truecel
  • They chose a course that extended the lovefest, bonded Barbaro to his fans and cemented his appeal as a documentary subject.2007 June 6, Richard Sandomir, “To an Equine Athlete Dying Young”, in New York Times. From the entry lovefest
  • The movie looks like battlefield documentary, grainy and (purposely) unbeautiful.1983 December 10, Jolanta Benal, “The Second Revolution”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 21, page 14. From the entry unbeautiful
  • From left, Tim Rarus, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Greg Hlibok and Jerry Covell in “Deaf President Now!,” a documentary film directed by Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim.2025 May 1, Noel Murray, “The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and More in May”, in The New York Times…. From the entry Bridgetta
  • There’s a story about Paula Yates bumping into Diana, Princess of Wales that Yates’s friend Belinda Brewin recollects in the documentary Paula this week.2023 March 15, Zoe Williams, “It’s a good time to think again about Paula Yates. She was the other Diana: hounded by the press for being…. From the entry smörgåsbord
  • However, Benning's micromanipulations suggest that documentary uncertainty always lies at the heart of documentary practices and their claiming of the real, whether potochemical or digital.2022, Jihoon Kim, Documentary's Expanded Fields. From the entry micromanipulation
  • Jia’s, has produced an admiring documentary portrait of the filmmaker, “Jia Zhangke, a Guy From Fenyang,” shot a few years back when Mr.2016 May 26, Glenn Kenny, “Review: ‘Jia Zhangke, a Guy From Fenyang,’ a Portrait of a Visionary Filmmaker”, in (Please provide the book…. From the entry Fenyang
  • A documentary about gun violence that has its premiere on HBO on Monday has been given extra topicality by the massacre in Charleston, S.C.2015 June 21, Neil Genzlinger, “Review: ‘Requiem for the Dead’ on HBO Explores Gun Violence in America”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry voyeuristic

Meaning of documentary

  1. adjective Of, related to, or based on documents.
  2. adjective Which serves to document (record or illustrate) a subject.
  3. adjective Presented objectively without the insertion of fictional matter.

Full definition of documentary

Questions about documentary in a sentence

How do you use documentary in a sentence?
Documentary is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “I was mostly unfamiliar with the nautical terms used in the sailing documentary.”
What is a short sentence with documentary?
“a documentary film”
What does documentary mean?
Documentary means of, related to, or based on documents.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: documentary (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.

Last updated:

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