How to Use motley crew in a Sentence

motley crew

noun
  • Our project is staffed by a motley crew of volunteers who have a wide variety of day jobs.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 28 Nov. 2021
  • Of course, the only thing your motley crew will actually be battling over is who gets the last piece of candy.
    — Kaitlin Stanford, Parents, 5 Oct. 2023
  • But Dwight’s operation is a motley crew more than a mafia crew: There are only three Italians and two made guys to speak of.
    — Sean T. Collins, Vulture, 15 Sep. 2024
  • The motley crew attends a Knicks game and goes shopping in the Big Apple, naturally.
    — Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 31 July 2023
  • She’s had an enviable motley crew of doll friends who’ve stood by her through the decades, and her dollhouse mansions put Bel Air mega estates to shame.
    — Parija Kavilanz, CNN, 22 July 2023
  • For a movie that was supposed to be about the end of the road for Marvel Studios’ deep-space motley crew, mid-credits and post-credits scenes were all about beginnings.
    — David Betancourt, Washington Post, 5 May 2023
  • The next big bad in Jared Leto's motley crew of sinister screen villains has finally been announced.
    — Ryan Coleman, EW.com, 21 Dec. 2024
  • Running to home base has never felt so urgent for this motley crew of beautifully flawed grown men.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 18 Apr. 2024
  • The people who trap, neuter, and release them—a process known in the animal-rescue world as TNR—are a motley crew of passionate volunteers.
    — Seyward Darby, Longreads, 5 July 2023
  • Shelley, Annette, Eddie, and the rest of this motley crew are simply doing their best, trying to make it through the harsh realities of their hard lives.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 7 Sep. 2024
  • There’s less pressure on a motley crew of anthropomorphic misfits than, say, Superman, whose time in the sun lies just around the corner.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 5 Dec. 2024
  • The series brings together a motley crew of strangers forced to do community service.
    — Rosy Cordero, Deadline, 20 Sep. 2024
  • Of course, the main event in any Agatha Christie thriller is the motley crew of suspects whose hidden motivations and connections eventually come to light.
    — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 11 Sep. 2023
  • And with that, our motley crew SXSW dream team had been assembled: three journalists, a cameraman, and a six-year-old who couldn’t care less about cryptocurrency.
    — Ben McKenzie, Rolling Stone, 17 July 2023
  • In hopes of a return to her youthful days, Venetia finds community in an entertaining motley crew of lost souls.
    — Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times, 15 May 2024
  • There was a motley crew of regulars: N.Y.U. students always calling the same Dylan tunes, and grizzled hippies always happy to oblige.
    — New York Times, 23 Feb. 2025
  • As a motley crew of resourceful out-of-towners and hooky-playing locals slowly gathered during the afternoon, the sun was out — the tattooed guns and buns were out — and normalcy reigned, for a few hours at least.
    — Ben Crandell, Sun Sentinel, 14 Apr. 2023
  • Prodigy follows a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search of a better future.
    — Denise Petski, Deadline, 20 June 2024
  • The two college biology students and a pair of local high school seniors, one in a LeBron James jersey, hop in, along with a yellow village dog who will trot alongside the motley crew all night.
    — Nina Burleigh, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2024
  • In the underworld, Catrina assembles a motley crew of the dead for their annual pilgrimage.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 3 July 2023
  • Confined to the dingy basement, the motley crew doesn’t get much respect, but their dynamic is hilariously relatable for anyone just trying to make it through the day in a dead-end office job.
    — Kevin Jacobsen, EW.com, 27 Sep. 2024
  • There are many solid gags among this motley crew — the pirate forever chasing his false eye, the parrot trained to speak for its mute master, the series of fetching wenches who deliver slaps to Sparrow for past wrongs.
    — Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 July 2023
  • Our motley crew of three men and three women—all midlife professionals working in media, coaching, and the corporate worlds—convenes in Tamraght, a small, quietly touristy town full of surfers.
    — Nirpal Dhaliwal, Condé Nast Traveler, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Williamson spends the entire movie moving from one L.A. locale and subculture to another, meeting a motley crew of criminals rich, scrappy, and everything in between, along the way.
    — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 24 Feb. 2025
  • As the host to a motley crew of Los Angeles natives and town-invading comedians, Mulaney seems to be testing the waters for what kind of comedy his audience wants from him now.
    — Aja Romano, Vox, 11 May 2024
  • How about design flaws of those animatronic exoskeletons?) and a motley crew of vandals bent on sabotage.
    — Jen Yamato, Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2023
  • In the main plot, a motley crew arrives for the Asteroid Day and Junior Stargazer celebrations only to become stranded after a shocking alien encounter.
    — Dallasnews.com Staff, Dallas News, 24 Aug. 2023
  • Meanwhile, a motley crew of sightseers becomes divided over how real this shipwreck holiday should be.
    — Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 15 July 2024
  • My mom is one of 18 siblings, and our annual tradition would be to gather as a big, crazy, Ojibwe family for a Thanksgiving meal at our grandmother Leda’s house, which served as the meeting spot for the whole motley crew.
    — Christian Allaire, Vogue, 28 Nov. 2024
  • Women’s Hotel follows a motley crew of residents at the fictional Beidermeier, inspired by the Barbizon, during its waning days in the 1960s.
    — Scarlett Harris, Architectural Digest, 31 Oct. 2024

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

Last Updated: