How to Use contrivance in a Sentence

contrivance

noun

• The story is filled with plot contrivances that do not fit the ending.
• He told the story honestly and without contrivance.
• He convinced her to go without using contrivance.
• Or just the writerly contrivance of their rhyming names?
  — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 12 Jan. 2022
• The effect is to remind us of the contrivance of fiction.
  — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2022
• The Bad Everywhere else in this episode, contrivance rules the day.
  — Erik Kain, Forbes, 2 June 2021
• Through a plot contrivance, Marek comes to live with Villiam.
  — New York Times, 13 June 2022
• To their credit, the producers have fun with the contrivance.
  — Brian Lowry, CNN, 12 May 2020
• Dell’s hiring is only the first of many plot contrivances.
  — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 10 Jan. 2019
• In this case, the sitcom Shakespeare is built around two contrivances.
  — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 21 Dec. 2023
• A lot of the things that potentially seem like contrivances turn out to be true.
  — Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 20 July 2023
• Yet Ford never falls into the trap of making that a plot contrivance.
  — Murtada Elfadl, Variety, 5 Aug. 2024
• Beneath the contrivances of stardom, music was a way of life and even a reason to go on living.
  — Lavinia Greenlaw, WSJ, 22 Dec. 2017
• As in a classic screwball comedy, the contrivances were part of the pleasure.
  — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 19 June 2023
• The smallest contribution to the Biden contrivance here is . . .
  — Jack Fowler, National Review, 18 June 2023
• The body-swapping contrivance is easier to believe than anything the film does with it.
  — Amy Nicholson, Variety, 10 Aug. 2022
• That giant sphere is a contrivance for Luke Halls’ fanciful video images of Earth and the universe.
  — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 12 June 2019
• To put forth this message, the film twists itself into knots of contrivance and confusion.
  — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 30 Sep. 2023
• Monster’s contrivances and convolutions didn’t all work for me, but the scenes the boys share in the final third are magical.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Dec. 2023
• But with the right character(s), played by the right actor(s), those contrivances become a path to the sort of joyful human connection Constance is talking about.
  — Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, 29 Aug. 2018
• One floor above, a sister restaurant serves up limp dosas and a chicken-and-rice contrivance masquerading as biryani.
  — The Economist, 30 Sep. 2017
• Think of this whole contrivance as a series of concentric circles.
  — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2021
• Weisz does full justice to the tragic realism inside the contrivance.
  — Charles Taylor, Newsweek, 7 June 2017
• Homefield in the Series is on the line, sure, but that’s a contrivance that realistically matters to about half a dozen teams and their fans.
  — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 26 June 2017
• Through a contrivance of angled mirrors and canny lighting, the gap is undetectable from inside the room.
  — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 16 May 2022
• The movie relies a lot on flatly staged shootouts and narrative contrivances, coupled with trite tough-guy poses.
  — Noel Murray, latimes.com, 7 Sep. 2017
• The fact that Pym’s stories sometimes end nowhere can be viewed as verisimilitude, but an awful lot depends on contrivance.
  — Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker, 30 May 2022
• This satiric sequel comes close to extending the joke too far, and the plot-starting death of Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is a lazy-rude contrivance.
  — Nick Romano, EW.com, 26 July 2024
• This is the basic raw material of teen movies, but the twists and tweaks to which they’re subjected here reveal more contrivance than insight.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2023
• Meanwhile, another product from yet another firm gets the full-course meal of a plot contrivance.
  — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2023

Last Updated: 7 Dec 2024