How to use rhetorical in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective, noun
Rhetorical means part of or similar to rhetoric, the use of language as a means to persuade. Example: “'"Are you an idiot? Actually, don't answer that, it was rhetorical."”
Examples of rhetorical by meaning
adjectiveAsked for dramatic or persuasive effect, rather than to get an answer.
- '"Are you an idiot? Actually, don't answer that, it was rhetorical."
More sentences with rhetorical
- Are you nuts? Don't answer that – it's a rhetorical question.From the entry rhetorical question
- Drawing the rhetorical distinction between the "people like yourselves" at the overwhelmingly white rally and "those people" protesting was, needless to say, a provocative framing of the issue.From the entry those people
- The backhandedness of this procedure reflects the fact that null hypothesis tests are motivated by rhetorical considerations.2012, Robert P. Abelson, Statistics As Principled Argument, →ISBN, page 10. From the entry backhandedness
- They have a variety of concepts to choose from in their rhetorical tool bags.2010, Ronald L. Jackson II, editor, Encyclopedia of Identity, Thousand Oaks, C.A.: SAGE Publications, Inc., →ISBN, page 730, column 1. From the entry sig
- Under all the mysterioso legerdemain, he was the Shakespeare of rhetorical bullying.2008 December 25, Richard Corliss, “The Pinter of Our Discontent”, in Time, archived from the original on 02 Jan 2009. From the entry mysterioso
- Sometimes we may be encountering the punctus percontativus, used to indicate a rhetorical question.1998, Alastair Fowler, Paradise Lost, 2nd edition, page 9, note 4. From the entry punctus percontativus
- Samson, with all the cunning of a rhetorical master, cornered him.1996, Beverley Harper, Storms Over Africa. From the entry borrow
- As a rhetorical maneuver, invoking common sense has the advantage of distancing oneself from a complicated, highfalutin legal analysis.2026 May 29, Will Baude, Richard Re, “The Supreme Court’s common sense problem”, in SCOTUSblog, archived from the original on 06 Jun 2026. From the entry highfalutin
- And that’s the tell: This is not a legal concept, but a political one, available for broad interpretation and rhetorical weaponization.2024 January 3, John Patrick Leary, “Israel's "Right to Exist" Is a Rhetorical Trap”, in The New Republic. From the entry tell
- Xuthus' exit has sharpness and rhetorical wit, with the inconcinne construction making the second line a drastic, even sarcastic aprosdoketon.2018, Gunther Martin, Euripides, "Ion": Edition and Commentary, page 309. From the entry inconcinne
- Sanders has scored some rhetorical points against Mrs.2016 January 30, “Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Nomination”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 03 Aug 2020…. From the entry comical
- A rhetographical analysis shows that online visual texts are rhetorical compositions whose messages are more complex than they appear.2016, Taiwo, Rotimi, Odebunmi, Akinola, Adetunji, & Akin, Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication, →ISBN, page 103. From the entry rhetography
- The author's rhetorical use of autoclesis is loaded.2016, Jeannette Baxter, J.G. Ballard's Surrealist Imagination: Spectacular Authorship. From the entry autoclesis
- Afterwards, questioners employ the rhetorical figure called epiplexis.2013, Jean Godefroy Bidima, “La Palabre: The Legal Authority of Speech”, in Law and the Public Sphere in Africa: La Palabre and Other…. From the entry epiplexis
- Characteristically, a rhetorical figure called “adnomination” is used, which repeats noun root in verb root or vice versa (for ex .2013, Darko Suvin, In Leviathan's Belly: Essays for a Counter-Revolutionary Time, →ISBN. From the entry adnomination
- It is, or should be, a sign of rhetorical weakness.2013 December 30, beat, “Archived copy”, in Hacker News, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2025. From the entry go Godwin
- Rhetorical relations have truth conditional effects that contribute to meaning but lie outside the purview of compositional semantics.2003, Nicholas Asher, Alex Lascarides, Logics of Conversation, page 7. From the entry purview
- The process of political othering was not simply a rhetorical consequence of the Revolution's own unifying political culture.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon 1715–99, London: Allen Lane, →ISBN; republished London: Penguin…. From the entry othering
- Wikipedia weds this ranging interest to the kind of pertinence where Larry David's “Pretty, pretty good!” is given as an example of rhetorical epizeuxis.2020 February 17, Richard Cooke, “Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet”, in Wired. From the entry epizeuxis
- Repeated rhetorical questions can move from general to specific, from short to long, from broad to narrow, but should always unpack like Russian dolls.2018, Danyal Freeman, Seductive Academic Writing, page 83. From the entry epiplexis
- This tamada had excellent rhetorical skills; he was fluent in both Russian and Kyrgyz and knew the languages of humor and honor.2017, Aksana Ismailbekova, “Rahim’s Victory Feast: Political Patronage and Kinship in Solidarity”, in Blood Ties and the Native Son…. From the entry tamada
- This particular brand of changing the subject is called 'whataboutism' — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia.2017 March 17, Danielle Kurtzleben, “Trump Embraces One Of Russia's Favorite Propaganda Tactics — Whataboutism”, in NPR, retrieved 20 May…. From the entry whataboutism
- Certainly parliamentary politics is indebted to the rhetorical culture of addressing issues from opposite views and debating the alternatives pro et contra.2014, Kari Palonen, José María Rosales, Tapani Turkka, “Introduction: The Parliamentary Politics of Dissensus”, in Kari Palonen, José…. From the entry dissensus
- He tries to correct this unsight in the second stanza, asking a series of speculative (and rhetorical) questions about his cousin's life.2012, Gregory Tate, The Poet's Mind: The Psychology of Victorian Poetry 1830-1870. From the entry unsight
- Cuomo, with Democratic politicians and antinuclear activists in tow, dropped a rhetorical bomb on the Indian Point nuclear power plant on Monday.2007 December 9, Peter Applebome, “The Power Grid Game: Choose a Catastrophe”, in New York Times. From the entry megawattage
- The narrator's use of erotema would seem to be a frantic rhetorical attempt to encourage acceptance in his audience of the theory of perversity .2005, Brett Zimmerman, Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style, page 211. From the entry erotema
- In rhetorical terminology, an elision in word-initial position was known as aphaeresis or prosiopesis, in word-medial position as syncope, and in word-final position as apocope.2003, David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, 5th edition, Wiley–Blackwell, →ISBN, page 159, →ISBN. From the entry prosiopesis
- Studies of chironomia had, from Elizabethan times, replicated the same descriptions of arm and hand gestures with the same prescription for their rhetorical.2003, Frederick Burwick, in Robyn Asleson, Notorious Muse, Yale University Press 2003, p. 130. From the entry chironomia
- At least, without reverting to an aregional formalism, we might begin to enlarge the discussion of the rhetorical properties of western writing.2003, Nathaniel Lewis, Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship, Lincoln, N.E.; London: University of Nebraska Press…. From the entry aregional
- The designer's task is to make visual language responsive to the rhetorical situation: the audience, the purpose, and the context of the document.1998, Charles Kostelnick, David Donovan Roberts, Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators, page 440. From the entry visual language
- He's at relative rhetorical ease with classy theoretical jabber such as emergent behavior, cyborganics, chaos theory, transparent interfaces, artificial life, and the machinic phylum.1996 July, Bruce Sterling, “Is Phoenix Burning”, in Wired, →ISSN. From the entry jabber
- Instead, Bronson spoke calmly, asexually recalling quiet peace rather than ecstasy, and in a rhetorical tradition that was far more ministerlike than courtly.1970, The passion of Robert Bronson, page 168. From the entry ministerlike
- He expressed his concerns through a series of histrionic rhetorical questions concerning L.A.’s shortcomings, all of which Sadie, a native Angeleno, already knew: Did she know about the earthquakes?2022, Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Vintage (2023), page 185. From the entry Angeleno
- Generalizing harshly and broadly but implying “you know which ones I mean” is an intellectual and rhetorical laziness that is not allowed to pass anywhere else in these communities.2016 March 11, Jennifer Coates, “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, in Medium. From the entry laziness
- A quite accurate but clumsy paraphrase of this rhetorical question could be “Your attempt to find out the searchables of the unsearchable God is doomed to failure”.2015, Reuven Tsur, On the Shore of Nothingness. From the entry searchable
- The Australian 'bush' or rural identity, bush-balladry, and the heroic traditions upon which they rest, speak to rhetorical propaganda of the nation-making through which colonial literature began.2015, Allana Lindgren, Stephen Ross, The Modernist World. From the entry bush-balladry
- Perhaps therefore, it is this linguistic or rhetorical effect that Wigmore is tackling with his “negatory” class (given that juratorial presentation is a constant motivation for Wigmore).2006, Glenn Rowe, Chris Reed, “Translating Wigmore Diagrams”, in Paul E. Dunne, Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, editors, Computational Models of…. From the entry juratorial
- Notwithstanding Moscow's rhetorical exercises, the Russian government was acutely aware that as long as Russia's military force remained ineffective against the Crimea, peace with Crimea could only be purchased.2004, Andreas Kappeler, Die Geschichte Russlands im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, →ISBN, page 371. From the entry Crimea
- Such a rhetorical tack may be understood in the context of what Steele has seen as the virtual nondebate in academia and the popular media over these issues.1993, Joseph G Conti, Brad Stetson, Challenging the civil rights establishment: profiles of a new Black vanguard. From the entry nondebate
Meaning of rhetorical
- adjective Part of or similar to rhetoric, the use of language as a means to persuade.
- adjective Not earnest, or presented only for the purpose of an argument.
- adjective Asked for dramatic or persuasive effect, rather than to get an answer.
Questions about rhetorical in a sentence
- How do you use rhetorical in a sentence?
- Rhetorical is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “'"Are you an idiot? Actually, don't answer that, it was rhetorical."”
- What is a short sentence with rhetorical?
- “Afterwards, questioners employ the rhetorical figure called epiplexis.”
- What does rhetorical mean?
- Rhetorical means part of or similar to rhetoric, the use of language as a means to persuade.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rhetorical (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 rhetorical in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/rhetorical. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
