How to Use materialism in a Sentence

materialism

noun
  • The young man leaves with a copy of the NIV and returns lauding the materialism of Marx.
    — Luther Ray Abel, National Review, 30 June 2021
  • All is made of atoms, a claim that leads to a brief overview of the history of materialism.
    — Denis Alexander, Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2023
  • In essence, the problem wasn’t a shortage of gas, but an excess of materialism.
    — Noah Robertson, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Dec. 2021
  • If Rodgers’s example is anything to go by, the road warriors of the old school were above such base materialism.
    — Martin Fritz Huber, Outside Online, 11 Jan. 2021
  • What this film tells the viewer is that success is not measured in materialism, but how much one gives back.
    — Rachael Scott, CNN, 19 Dec. 2020
  • What this film tells the viewer is that success is not measured in materialism, but how much one gives back.
    — Rachael Scott, CNN, 25 Dec. 2021
  • The two lyricists found themselves in a genre now ruled by materialism.
    — Troy L. Smith, cleveland, 13 Apr. 2021
  • Let these guys soak in the joy of the achievement before drowning them in mindless materialism.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 16 Jan. 2020
  • Adams was, above all, a critic of the materialism of the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
    — Diane Scharper, Washington Examiner, 31 Dec. 2020
  • His images reveal his disdain for materialism, and the cost of greed.
    — Cat Woods, Los Angeles Times, 6 Sep. 2024
  • The fifth and final single from Born to Die is a playful take on love as materialism, with a dark underbelly.
    — Richard S. He, Billboard, 28 Aug. 2019
  • They are rooted in the spiritual world—a realm that feels lost amid our own tumult of materialism.
    — Sara Wheeler, WSJ, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Yet there is something in her vision, its materialism and its idealism too, that might serve us.
    — Emily Harnett, Harper's Magazine, 26 Apr. 2024
  • As part of the rapid social change of the late 1960s, idealists in rebellion against rat-race materialism joined communes and encounter groups.
    — New York Times, 7 May 2022
  • But naming something can serve to push against a culture of materialism.
    — Kathryn Hymes, The Atlantic, 14 Apr. 2022
  • No wonder so many of us, even in this age of scientific materialism, still believe in God.
    — John Horgan, Scientific American, 5 Nov. 2020
  • Is the turn toward panpsychism a kind of neo-Romanticism born of our yearning to reënchant the world that materialism has rendered mute?
    — Meghan O’Gieblyn, The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2019
  • But this woman holds something else — a prism, an object that strikes a note of potential and promise, not materialism.
    — Tim Smith, baltimoresun.com, 16 June 2017
  • This makes perfect sense, since if the self has an end (materialism, remember), then the self is an appropriate end in itself.
    — Christian Wiman, Harper's Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024
  • This makes perfect sense, since if the self has an end (materialism, remember), then the self is an appropriate end in itself.
    — Harper's Magazine, 25 June 2024
  • Turgenev saw in them a crude but powerful materialism that counterposed the needs of the peasantry against the vague consolations of art.
    — Keith Gessen, The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2022
  • Sounds like someone took the lesson of overwhelming materialism from the Christmas special to heart.
    — Nardine Saad, Los Angeles Times, 18 Nov. 2020
  • Young women being asked to tell a story that’s outside of materialism or their bodies or their careers is very rare and [those stories are] hard to get funded.
    — Hanna Phifer, Harper's BAZAAR, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Her pieces are collide-o-scopic mashups of materialism and consumerism.
    — Steven Litt, cleveland.com, 4 Aug. 2019
  • The hajj in Islam is meant to unify Muslims, with pilgrims shedding displays of wealth and materialism.
    — Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2019
  • The reality is that really just reflects the cosmopolitan materialism of the West of our day.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 22 Dec. 2011
  • There are some places where moral outrage should triumph materialism.
    — Mei Fong, The Atlantic, 11 July 2020
  • Now, Santa is all but entrenched in the Christmas lexicon, the rosy-cheeked face of Christmas who is the subject of movies, perennial parental lies and debates about childhood materialism.
    — Author: Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Alaska Dispatch News, 5 Oct. 2017
  • The exhibition is meant to be both an indictment of American materialism and a tribute to Indigenous artists who have been silenced by Eurocentric institutions, says Luger.
    — Laura Regensdorf Katharine Sohn Laura Bannister Osman Can Yerebakan Shannon Adducci, New York Times, 13 Feb. 2025
  • With Marxism tainted by its aggressive materialism, and mere democratic socialism so mere, anarchism could be imagined as a series of defiant spiritual acts.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'materialism.' 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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