How to Use sulky in a Sentence

sulky

1 of 2 adjective
  • She's in a sulky mood.
  • She is very sulky today.
  • Keep an eye out for chartreuses, browns, and bright sky blues, along with sulky mauves and beiges in a plaster finish.
    — Abby Wolner, Better Homes & Gardens, 5 Feb. 2026
  • No sniggering jokes now about princely flings and sulky princesses and body doubles.
    — Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2024
  • By contrast, this latest bit of research hammers the gas, forcing it, like a sulky teenager, to tidy away its qubits.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 Nov. 2018
  • And how annoyingly aggrieved and, well, small the birthday boy appears in his sulky silence.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 30 Oct. 2017
  • Lestat wastes no time in breaking the guy's neck and offering him up for his sulky boyfriend, but in the end, Louis chooses a cat.
    — Sara Netzley, EW.com, 17 Oct. 2022
  • That’s no small feat, considering how sulky and borderline-bratty Donn comes across in early scenes.
    — Joe Leydon, Variety, 1 Nov. 2024
  • While Liam sits in this big, ritzy AF mansion looking pensive and sulky with his shirt unbuttoned!
    — Noelle Devoe, Seventeen, 26 Jan. 2018
  • Austin Butler’s version of Elvis is a sulky pretty boy with smokey-eye makeup, loud silk shirts, and lips the color and texture of bubblegum.
    — Katie Rife, Vulture, 24 June 2022
  • What comes through now is the vehemence and sulky confusion of a generation’s anti-American snit.
    — Armond White, National Review, 2 June 2021
  • Slater also oversaw a marketing campaign that presented his new artist as a sulky siren, transforming her into a global star and a media target.
    — Mick Stevens, The New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2021
  • The dramatics only heightened from there, as the singer's sharp movements and mostly neutral expression played into her sulky aesthetic.
    — Lyndsey Havens, Billboard, 6 Aug. 2017
  • There are towns such as Kardamyli, so lovely that Agamemnon offered it to sulky Achilles to lure him out of bed to fight the Trojan War.
    — Antonia Quirke, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 May 2024
  • Characters included a pirate, a murderer and a sulky baby, but one of the funniest hitchhiker sketches was the simplest.
    — Nara Schoenberg, chicagotribune.com, 20 Oct. 2017
  • So perturbed is Costa, in fact, that the sulky Spain international starts launching footballs into a goal 40 yards away in protest.
    — SI.com, 12 Oct. 2017
  • Both wrote famously about the Santa Anas — the former describing them as a driver of bar fights and murder, the latter as a cause of sulky maids and screaming peacocks.
    — Los Angeles Times, 11 Feb. 2022
  • With these spoiler-sensitive twists the book seems to change from a sulky character study to a wicked satire of artistic arrogance and the accidental nature of immortality.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 16 Mar. 2018
  • Still, certain sensitivities might need to be respected as the excitable Gemini Moon shoves sulky Saturn.
    — Tarot.com, Sun Sentinel, 27 Aug. 2024
  • There are invariably some boldface names in the throng, a few adorably sulky teenage hipsters, a clutch of serious New York theater impresarios, and a number of confused millennials.
    — Sally Singer, Vogue, 8 Jan. 2019
  • Since confirming his breakup with Gigi on Twitter, Zayn has followed up his mysterious post with a second selfie that's similarly sulky.
    — Noelle Devoe, Seventeen, 13 Mar. 2018
  • In the late 1990s, Louis Easton was a sulky teen when his horticulturist father introduced him to plant care and merchandising.
    — Jeanette Marantosstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2022
  • Skillfully carrying the tale as Kimberly is Ann Morrison, marvelously placing the qualities of a bubbly when not sulky teen in the voice and body of an older woman.
    — Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities, 25 Feb. 2026
  • The sulky postwar formation that Moyn depicts owes a great deal to Christian brooding on original sin, as well as to Sigmund Freud’s then increasingly popular conception of the self as impulsive and destructive.
    — Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2023
  • After a strange courtship ritual—in which, as a favor to Liveright, Cerf accompanied the writer Theodore Dreiser to an afternoon baseball game that the latter man, bored, sulky, whisked them from around the sixth inning—Cerf took the job.
    — Literary Hub, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Playing Dawn Summers, Trachtenberg joined the show in 2000, as Buffy's younger sister, who was at times bratty, sulky, and a bit of a klutz — but nonetheless offered a new and exciting sibling dynamic for the show to explore.
    — Shania Russell, EW.com, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Founder Max Siegelman drew upon his family’s harness racing roots thanks to the boarding and teaching facility for the sport involving the powerful animal, a sulky and human direction that dates to the 1800s in the US.
    — Roxanne Robinson, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2025

sulky

2 of 2 noun
  • There was the sulky dressing room speech to his teammates, which Klopp noted whilst sharing his thoughts on the transfer on Sunday.
    — SI.com, 2018-01-07

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