How to Use clannish in a Sentence

clannish

adjective
  • The college faculty can be pretty clannish, so it's difficult to be an outsider there.
  • They were drawn as lazy, clannish, unclean, drunken brawlers who wallowed in crime and bred like rats.
    — Michael Harriot, The Root, 17 Mar. 2018
  • The West Side – solid and loyal, traditional and clannish – takes care of its own.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 5 Aug. 2017
  • The most successful of those managers have carved out a niche catering to the valley’s famously clannish billionaire elites.
    — James McClain, Robb Report, 6 Dec. 2023
  • And yet to visit Derry’s neighborhoods is to find a strange mix of clannish loyalty and civic open-mindedness.
    — New York Times, 3 July 2022
  • The chairman’s power endures amid a culture of sycophancy and clannish distrust of anyone outside his inner circle of party bosses.
    — Frank Scaturro, National Review, 13 July 2017
  • As each story revolves around the perils and power of racial or clannish identity, their sequels would naturally call for advances in inclusion of all kinds.
    — Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 29 Aug. 2022
  • That in-on-the-joke mentality, as well as the clannish nature of streetwear cool, has created a decades-long frenzy surrounding Supreme’s weekly releases.
    — Lauren Schwartzberg, WIRED, 25 May 2017
  • At a time when music has become a clannish activity, the age range, from teens to octogenarian and possibly beyond, was exceptional.
    — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 23 May 2018
  • At first, Edge’s noisy entourage and naive enthusiasm irritated the park’s rather shy and clannish community of bird enthusiasts.
    — Melissa Groo, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Mar. 2021
  • At the same time, millennia of dynastic rule have taught the Chinese a thing or two about the tribal tendencies of the ruling class, as well as about clannish behavior at all levels of society.
    — Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker, 19 May 2017
  • In the Middle Ages, local churchgoers whispered of clannish Jews poisoning wells to kill Christian children and steal their blood for their rituals.
    — Mike Rothschild, Big Think, 31 Mar. 2026
  • The Machine was lambasted, fairly, for its clannish coördination and its efforts to keep Democratic politics in a certain mainstream style.
    — Nathan Heller, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • Think Jeronimo Yanez, Philando Castile’s killer, and see how young officers fare in these toxic, clannish environments.
    — Cynthia Gomez Engoulou, Star Tribune, 19 Nov. 2020
  • The Oulipo, a diverse if clannish guild that has somehow managed to survive for fifty-eight years, has included both major writers and pedantic hobbyists, and inspired work along the entire range of its members’ capabilities.
    — Luc Sante, Harper's magazine, 10 Jan. 2019
  • Without aspirations for the future, they are held together by clannish loyalty and racist resentment — an empty sense of white entitlement and a perpetually expanding catalog of grievances.
    — New York Times, 8 Dec. 2021
  • This clannish pocket of Roseland was packed with first- and second- generation homeowners willing to lend a hand with parenting responsibilities, especially to struggling neighbors.
    — Madeline Buckley, chicagotribune.com, 29 Aug. 2019
  • The mine companies did, however, pour funding into excellent schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, and Ely’s mix of clannish immigrants implanted a lasting culture of saunas and stable family life.
    — Jack Brook, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 July 2020
  • Assortative mating inputs wealth, social connections, and clannish expertise to gain its children entry to private schools, organized extracurriculars, and all sorts of socio-economic advantages.
    — Rich Benjamin, Esquire, 13 Sep. 2017
  • The flood of immigrants who settled in the area were a motley crew – clannish Scandinavians, Germans, Irish Catholics escaping famine, Yankees from New England, Black refugees from the segregated South, Mexican workers seeking a better life.
    — Harry Boyte, Twin Cities, 8 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'clannish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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