Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use portray in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Portray means to paint or draw the likeness of. Example: “I will portray a king on horseback.”

Examples of portray by meaning

verbTo paint or draw the likeness of.

  • I will portray a king on horseback.

verbTo play a role; to depict a character, person, situation, or event.

  • For my next movie, I will be portraying Shakespeare.

More sentences with portray

  • Despite what some cartoons portray, no humans were around when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.From the entry dinosaur
  • Arwen is portrayed as a valiant swordswoman in the Lord of the Rings films.From the entry swordswoman
  • The audio contained some spelling pronunciations, such as when "sieve" was mistakenly portrayed as rhyming with "leave".From the entry spelling pronunciation
  • The film portrays the brutality of slavery.From the entry slavery
  • He portrayed them tongue-in-cheek as great lawgivers, as Solons.From the entry tongue-in-cheek
  • Sino-Tibetan relations are more complicated than the media portrays.From the entry Sino-Tibetan
  • Many of these fantasy novels feature a main character portrayed as a chosen one who will save everyone else.From the entry chosen one
  • They are being deliberately provocative, so they can portray railway workers as 'troublesome trots'.2022 June 15, Christian Wolmar, “What do the railways need and how can we fulfil that need?”, in RAIL, number 959, page 45. From the entry troublesome
  • A comforting anchor, Samuel was a contradiction to the frightening events portrayed.2017, Daniel I. Russell, Entertaining Demons. From the entry spectrology
  • But portraying a person with a disability comes with its own responsibility.2017 November 30, Gary Goldstein, “To portray a paralyzed polio patient in ‘Breathe,’ Andrew Garfield relied on his voice and…. From the entry bang on the money
  • The show needs to portray the designer's handwriting but it should also be innovative too.2016, Nilgin Yusuf, Fashion's Front Line, page 112. From the entry handwriting
  • She is portrayed as a young beautiful woman wearing a royal gown, sometimes riding a peacock.2016, Pamela Ball, “The Physical Practice of Tao”, in The Essence of Tao, London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 172. From the entry feng-huang
  • Taken as a whole, the article portrayed Ray as an indigent, racist “Hoosier” (St.2015, Pate McMichael, Klandestine: How a Klan Lawyer and a Checkbook Journalist ..., page 2. From the entry hoosier
  • Romney has sought to portray himself in recent days as a more measured candidate than Mr.2012 February 29, Michael Barbaro, Erik Eckholm, “Romney Sets Off Furor on Contraception Bill”, in New York Times, retrieved 22 Sep 2017. From the entry light one's hair on fire
  • Moore and Eick seem to be uncomfortable portraying men as men really are.2006 November 18, First-2-Die, “Re: Hero (Mild Spoilers)”, in alt.battlestar-galactica (Usenet), message-ID…. From the entry siress
  • In fact, he liked to portray himself as a supervirile type, both in life and in literature.1997, Frank Bartine Leib, Friendly competitors, fierce companions: men's ways of relating. From the entry supervirile
  • The factory manager is portrayed as a contemporary version of Ubu, the hero of Alfred Jarry's trilogy.1995, Yosefa Loshitzky, The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci, Wayne State University Press, →ISBN, page 35. From the entry ubuesque
  • With little political experience, Hofeld is portraying himself as an outsider, an antipolitician.1992 February 21, James Hawking, “More Than 30 Seconds With Al Hofeld”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry antipolitician
  • Indeed, it was always black Muslims who were portrayed as being racists, superracists, anti-Christians, white haters.1992, David R. Collins, Malcolm X: Black Rage, page 91. From the entry superracist
  • There's nothing like portraying a psychopathic bunny-boiler to boost one's self-esteem, Glenn Close tells Ladies' Home Journal.[1990 December 6, The Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Tex.: The Dallas Morning News, →ISSN, →OCLC, page A2, column 3. From the entry bunny-boiler
  • "Bodice-ripper" heroines were portrayed to be stronger and more active characters than gothic heroines.1984, Margaret Ann Jensen, “Rivals and Writers”, in Love’s $weet Return: The Harlequin Story, Bowling Green, Oh.: Bowling Green State…. From the entry bodice ripper
  • For the champion triviaphile, what was the name of the handsome man who portrayed Tarzan opposite Bo?1984 April, Tom Arranaga, “Trivia Quiz: Pursuing Trivia About Today's and Yesterday's Femme Fatales”, in Orange Coast, →ISSN, page 147. From the entry triviaphile
  • Egypt's artists visually portrayed all humans and animals only as one-plane, flat silhouettes.1981, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry omnidimensional
  • New exhibition portraying historical events and everyday life during the Roaring Twenties.1979 December, “Museums”, in Texas Monthly, volume 7, number 12, page 22. From the entry decade
  • Its light, humorous, unmoralizing attitude could not entirely temper the vicious tone of the man it portrayed.1931, A. I. Tobin, Elmer Gertz, Frank Harris: A Study in Black and White, page 190. From the entry unmoralizing
  • No man, however, can always be wrong, and an overvivid imagination occasionally really portrays.1907, A. W. Tozer, The Independent 1907-05-16: Volume 62, Issue 3050, Open Court Publishing Company, page 1155. From the entry overvivid
  • I also think it is because I portray myself, I am more confident and outgoing - I am finally myself again.2023 April 4, Ellen Coughlan, quoting Whitney Pepper, “I tipped the scales at 299Ibs and lost over half my body weight - but now I'm…. From the entry be oneself
  • Han or "K-Rage" aka Korean Rage is a real thing and they portrayed it quite well in Beef.2023 May 3, metalsippycup, “Can we talk about "Han"?”, in r/BeefTV (Reddit post), archived from the original on 06 Jul 2026. From the entry K-rage
  • Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable.2019 March 7, Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Centier. From the entry sealioning
  • "In her old age she has that indomitable spirit," said actress Helen Mirren, who has twice portrayed Her Majesty.2019, PEOPLE Royal Women. From the entry Queenist
  • They display faux outrage and promise brave perseverance in the face of criticisms that are often exaggeratedly portrayed as attacks.2019 October 7, Arthur C. Brooks, “What’s the deal with the anti-endorsement?”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 11…. From the entry anti-endorsement
  • The actor will portray famed photographer Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer of motion-pictures who had a deeply troubled past, according to Deadline.2018 May 16, Jack Shepherd, “Gary Oldman will write, direct and star in latest passion project Flying Horse”, in The Independent, London…. From the entry motion-picture
  • Labor-leisure models portray overemployment as an individual labor-market phenomenon, but it can also be viewed from a macroeconomic perspective.2015, Morris Altman, Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics, →ISBN, page 490. From the entry overemployment
  • Fishermen "are not the monstrocious killers everyone's portraying," Guptill says.2013, August 9, Arlene Benham The Quoddy Tides Vol.45 No.16 "Photos spark shark-killing investigation". From the entry monstrocious
  • Playception: Each actor must portray a character playing another character.2012, Maura Breen, "Latest play presents challenge for actors", Tan & Cardinal (Otterbein University), Volume 94, Issue 5, 26 September…. From the entry -ception
  • What both indicates a balloon and portrays it as, say, red is a single object – a red, Q-shaped pigment patch.2012, J. F. Rosenberg, Linguistic Representation, page 100. From the entry Q-shaped
  • A class moniker portrays a class factory.2011, Thuan L. Thai, Learning DCOM, O'Reilly, page 121. From the entry moniker
  • The boiling frog syndrome portrays how people react to change.2010, Anne [Elizabeth] Makzulak, “Green Biotechnology”, in Sustainability: Building Eco-friendly Communities (Green Technology), New York…. From the entry boiling frog

Meaning of portray

  1. verb To paint or draw the likeness of.
  2. verb To represent by an image or look.
  3. verb To describe in words; to convey.

Full definition of portray

Questions about portray in a sentence

How do you use portray in a sentence?
Portray is used as a verb. For example: “I will portray a king on horseback.”
What is a short sentence with portray?
“A class moniker portrays a class factory.”
What does portray mean?
Portray means to paint or draw the likeness of.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portray (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 portray in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/portray. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.