How to use performative in a sentence
23 example sentences · adjective, noun
Performative means being enacted as it is said. Example: “Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.”
Examples of performative by meaning
adjectiveBeing enacted as it is said.
- Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.
- Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage.1975 April 15, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN
adjectiveInsincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance...
- We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others.
- The Harambe meme soon became the perfect parody of the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it.2017, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN, Introduction
- Work has become more performative.2022 January 8, “The rise of performative work”, in The Economist, →ISSN
nounA performative utterance.
- The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning.2011, Phyllis Kaburise, Speech Act Theory and Communication: A Univen Study, page 77
More sentences with performative
- It is hard to know if this rift is real or performative.2026 July 1, Riccardo Alcaro, “Why Meloni has hit back hard against Trump and his ‘made up’ photo claim”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry lèse-majesté
- The term “performative miserabilism” has been coined to explain France’s confusing penchant towards self-cynicism.2023 May 1, Alexander Hurst, “Has France really gone to hell? Its catastrophist discourse is at odds with the facts”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry miserabilism
- With respect to the narrative's performative dimension, con artistry disables its reformist effects.2018, Amanda Claybaugh, The Novel of Purpose, page 63. From the entry con artistry
- Instead of any meaningful spiritual awakening, it's a performative wokening.2022, Dave Rubin, Don't Burn This Country. From the entry woken
- However, the series also finds Roseanne's performative MAGAism equally humorous.2022 April 12, Karen McNally, American Television during a Television Presidency, Wayne State University Press, →ISBN. From the entry MAGAism
- Their performative origins are undocumentably beyond our earliest record.2018, Odai Johnson, Ruins: Classical Theater and Broken Memory, page 37. From the entry undocumentably
- When a sentence is heard, we are responsible for deciding if the sentence is performative, constantive, or both.2016, Rosemary Papa, Danielle M. Eadens, Daniel W. Eadens, Social Justice Instruction: Empowerment on the Chalkboard, →ISBN, page 67. From the entry constantive
- Minstrelsy's conventions that figure race in black and white specularise the wider discourses, but they are also performative.2013, Dr Alison Ravenscroft, The Postcolonial Eye. From the entry specularise
- The two that play the biggest part in the negotiation dance are constantive speech acts and performative speech acts.2009, James W. Koschoreck, Autumn K. Tooms, Sexuality Matters: Paradigms and Policies for Educational Leaders, →ISBN. From the entry constantive
- If the circumstances are not in order, the uttering of a performative is a “misinvocation" and the act is disallowed.1968, James H. Olthuis, Facts, Values and Ethics, page 146. From the entry misinvocation
- I’m done with pathetic, performative people.”2026 June 28, David Smith, “Will the Mamdani effect make 2028 the year of the leftwing president?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry centrist
- A mixture of isolationism, cronyism, nativist rhetoric, somewhat performative authoritarianism, corporate tax cuts and personality cult, Trumpism is what the president says it is.2020 November 5, “Trump and Trumpism”, in The Economist, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Nov 2020. From the entry Trumpism
- Hope in liberation can imbue the singular transgressive body-performativity as well as the performative uses of fallibilist pragmatic presuppositions of human communication action.1998, Martin J[oseph] Beck Matuštík, “Hope and Refusal”, in Specters of Liberation: Great Refusals in the New World Order (SUNY Series in…. From the entry refusenik
- The child's progress in the modification stage can be characterized as an advancement from the use of performatives to the use of reportatives.1976, Barbara S. Wood, Children and Communication: Verbal and Nonverbal Language Development. From the entry reportative
- But drinking in the bath always feels slightly performative, as though I'm auditioning for the role of beloved boozy singleton and UK national treasure, Bridget Jones.2025 June 7, Jo Ellison, “Breakfast in bath—yes or eurgh?”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN…. From the entry national treasure
- Given the pop star's tendency towards self-aestheticization, I think there is an argument to be made for genderplay and its close interconnection with homosociality as a performative strategy.2009, Stan Hawkins, The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture, page 85. From the entry genderplay
- If the attributative body of performative actions, behaviours and utterances has no place in cyberspace, it is hazardous to suggest that this means there are no bodies in cyberspace.2004, More dirty looks : gender, pornography and power, page 97. From the entry attributative
Meaning of performative
- adjective Being enacted as it is said.
- adjective Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.
- noun A performative utterance.
Questions about performative in a sentence
- How do you use performative in a sentence?
- Performative is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.”
- What is a short sentence with performative?
- “Work has become more performative.”
- What does performative mean?
- Performative means being enacted as it is said.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: performative (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 performative in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/performative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
