Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use symbolic in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Symbolic means pertaining to a symbol. Example: “With the find command, any symbolic links appearing after -follow will be dereferenced.”

Examples of symbolic by meaning

adjectivePertaining to a symbol.

  • When a series of bank failures made this impossible, there was widespread anger, leading to the public humiliation of symbolic figures.2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, archived from the original on...

adjectiveImplicitly representing or referring to another thing.

  • a symbolic gesture
  • They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.2023 June 17, Tom Perkins, “‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags”, in The Guardian, archived from...
  • As a sign-off, they played the video for 1979 new wave classic, a symbolic choice at it was also the first video that MTV ever aired when it launched in the US in 1981.2026 January 1, Max Pilley, “MTV shuts down final music-only channels with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’”, in NME

More sentences with symbolic

  • With the find command, any symbolic links appearing after -follow will be dereferenced.From the entry dereference
  • The handler of a weapon gets a symbolic sensation of deadly power.From the entry handler
  • 'O horror, horror, horror', Macduff cries, his epizeuxis reflecting a lack in the symbolic order itself.2022, Clive Bloom, The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic Origins, page 39. From the entry epizeuxis
  • He’s particularly drawn to symbolic fights where he can take an angry stand against cultural change.2020 June 11, Paul Waldman, “Why Donald Trump is standing up for the Confederacy”, in Washington Post. From the entry revanchism
  • Another interpretation rightly refutes any symbolic hypothesis of the wearing of the mi-parti.2019, Nada Hélou, “Notes on Donor Images in the Churches of Lebanon”, in Peter Edbury, Denys Pringle, Balázs Major, editors, Bridge of…. From the entry mi-parti
  • Yet the term white trash has performed much of the same symbolic violence.2006, Matt Wray, Not Quite White, page 145. From the entry ethnophaulism
  • In addition, our implementation integrates subsymbolic automacy with considerable symbolic computing, most discernible in the mapping algorithm.2004, Computer Music Association, Proceedings of the ... International Computer Music Conference. From the entry automacy
  • Surely there once was one: a symbolic, navellike dimple in the dirt floor.2004, Reuben J. Ellis, Stories and Stone: Writing the Ancestral Pueblo Homeland, page 161. From the entry navellike
  • Possession of a drum performs the symbolic function of representing physically the dhāmi-jhākri’s mastery of particular spirits.2003, Damian Walker, “Medium of the Message: Shamanism as Localised Practice in the Nepal Himalayas”, in Neil S[tuppel] Price, editor, The…. From the entry tutelary deity
  • Baldness also has a further symbolic connection with one's restoration to grace.2002, Timothy S. Jones, David A. Sprunger, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, Western…. From the entry hairlore
  • This adjoined-ness or next-to-ness is not only characteristic of symbolic art; it is what is specifically architectural.2000, William Maker, Hegel and Aesthetics, page 88. From the entry next-to-ness
  • They often included the symbolic triad of Sun, Moon, and Venus.1998, John H. Roger, “Origins of the ancient constellations: I. The Mesopotamian traditions”, in Journal of the British Astronomy…. From the entry triad
  • The symbolic value of "The pied piper of Hamelyn" would have been ordinarily too subtle.1996 July 7, Why?, “Bellwether -- a book full of crap”, in bit.listserv.words-l (Usenet). From the entry crappitude
  • Dirac approaches quantum mechanics by means of a so-called symbolic method, the bracket formalism.1986, S. J. L. van Eijndhoven, J. de Graaf, A Mathematical Introduction to Dirac's Formalism, Elsevier (North-Holland), page ix. From the entry formalism
  • There is a strong feeling that pseudo-English is more "user friendly" than symbolic notation.1983, Laurie A. Russell, David M. Weintraub, APL 83, Conference proceedings, Washington, D.C., April 10-13, 1983. From the entry pseudo-English
  • But like all the other symbolic devourings in the novel, this one too brings its revelation.1982, Frederick Asals, Flannery O'Connor, the Imagination of Extremity, page 189. From the entry devouring
  • Man was thus virtually a symbolic puppet in the hands of the Roman pantheon.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 209. From the entry puppet
  • Expect to hear a lot more about neurosymbolic AI, which attempts to merge existing data-driven neural networks with rules-based symbolic AI.2026 January 3, “Three questions AI needs to answer”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6. From the entry neurosymbolic
  • In this pop-culture milieu, political parties are like personality cults, and their leaders are symbolic of their group’s identity.2023, Michael Bond, Fans: A Journey Into the Psychology of Belonging, Picador, →ISBN. From the entry maga
  • In Olgii, capital of Bayan-Olgii, the symbolic importance of the eagle to the ethnic identity of the Altai Kazakhs is clear.[2018 December 22, Hannah Reyes Morales, “At 14, She Hunts Wolves and Takes Selfies With Cherished Eagle in Mongolia”, in The New York…. From the entry Ölgii
  • It has thus been recycled and hermeneutically reinterpreted to accommodate the unconscious content and symbolic needs of the more modern age.2014, Brian Anse Patrick, Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns), London: Arktos, →ISBN, page 40. From the entry re-explain
  • Commentators have described the phenomenon as symbolic of the growing political debate about use of Twitter in Saudi Arabia.2012 April 19, Josh Halliday, “Free speech haven or lawless cesspool – can the internet be civilised?”, in the Guardian. From the entry mufti
  • The Thing obviously serves as a symbolic representation of the war, its destruction of normal family life, its unremittant slaughter.2012, Alexa Alfer, Amy J. Edwards de Campos, A.S. Byatt: Critical Storytelling, →ISBN, page 117. From the entry unremittant
  • Wallace served as governor, holds a special symbolic value.2009 June 5, Robbie Brown, “Black Congressman Eyes Alabama Governor’s Seat”, in New York Times. From the entry archsegregationist
  • A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.2007 November 25, Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity”, in New York Times. From the entry rehiring
  • In other words, he ontologizes the symbolic and heteronormalizes us.2007, September: Mark Bevir, Jill Hargis, and Sara Rushing, Histories of Postmodernism, page 245 (Routledge; →ISBN, 9780415956130). From the entry heteronormalize
  • Mujra is symbolic of total submission before a royal patron.2006, Martha Feldman, Bonnie Gordon, editors, The Courtesan's Arts, Oxford, page 322. From the entry mujra
  • Astrology was a symbolic constant all over the world.2003, Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday, →ISBN, page 19. From the entry stink
  • At times, different symbolic modes were intertwined.2000, Maureen Patricia Carroll, Whitecaps on the Keyboard, page 20. From the entry screenland
  • They would become something else, very powerful perceptual-motor systems, like those of a superprimate, perhaps, but not truly symbolic.2000, Larry Nucci, Geoffrey B. Saxe, Elliot Turiel, Culture, Thought, and Development, →ISBN. From the entry superprimate
  • Smells like newly cut grass from a farmer's sickle seemed so clean and symbolic of the freshness of a “mercied” heart.1997, Gordon MacDonald, The Life God Blesses, →ISBN. From the entry mercied
  • Dataist works are not singular art objects but algorithmic procedures and digital databases that have a symbolic description.1993, Frank Popper, Art of the electronic age, page 87. From the entry dataist
  • Moreover, once retrieved, suppressed events, confrontational episodes, submerged political upheavals, abortive uprising offer symbolic density or enrichment to current circumstances.1993, David Ernest Apter, Democracy, Violence and Emancipatory Movements. From the entry unhistory
  • In the Visual Survey Analysis Report, focals are divided into four categories; visual, historical, symbolic, and cultural focals.1978, New Orleans region transportation study, page 29. From the entry focal
  • But unlike them, when anger is mimicked it isn’t anger—it isn’t the emotion, only the action or the symbolic.1973, Eugene T[ovio] Gendlin, “A Phenomenology of Emotions: Anger”, in David Carr, Edward S. Casey, editors, Explorations in Phenomenology…. From the entry mimickability
  • "The symbolic figure of Santa Claus, St.1947, Valentine Davies, chapter 10, in Miracle on 34th Street, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 63. From the entry Kris Kringle

Meaning of symbolic

  1. adjective Pertaining to a symbol.
  2. adjective Implicitly representing or referring to another thing.

Full definition of symbolic

Questions about symbolic in a sentence

How do you use symbolic in a sentence?
Symbolic is used as an adjective. For example: “With the find command, any symbolic links appearing after -follow will be dereferenced.”
What is a short sentence with symbolic?
“a symbolic gesture”
What does symbolic mean?
Symbolic means pertaining to a symbol.

Source and license

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