How to Use facetious in a Sentence

facetious

adjective
  • The questions were facetious, but Burnett didn’t smile.
    Zach Helfand, latimes.com, 29 July 2017
  • Diplo then set off a stream of response tweets, rich with memes and facetious apologies.
    Kat Bein, Billboard, 12 June 2018
  • Now, Courtney, this is a way of asking the question in a facetious manner, but there is a kernel here.
    Laura Johnston, cleveland, 27 May 2022
  • The Werewolf of Washington’ aren’t too scary, and the funny bits tend to come out fitfully facetious.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Herron suspects that le Carré would find his work facetious.
    Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 28 Nov. 2022
  • While a team official said last week that Thomas was being facetious, and in fact Sibel did not say that, Thomas clearly was not the same player in terms of speed, quickness and strength in his legs.
    Joe Vardon, cleveland.com, 9 Feb. 2018
  • The portrait is good, the prose embroidered here with the facetious parlance—is that the word?—of clubs.
    V. S. Pritchett, "Club and Country", 1949
  • Bogart plays for teams with facetious names like the Kentucky Fighting Chickens and the Thundercats.
    Mark Wright, star-telegram.com, 22 June 2017
  • Bauer replied first with a string of chin-scratching emojis, then with a facetious allusion to possible malfeasance.
    Chandler Rome, Houston Chronicle, 1 May 2018
  • And the other screen Bonds have their admirers, despite the lesser movies’ unevenness or facetious gadgetry.
    Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 8 Oct. 2021
  • The quote went viral on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as a clip of his comments began drawing facetious backlash.
    Angela Yang, NBC News, 21 Aug. 2023
  • In other instances, the report says that police may have over-reacted to facetious social media posts.
    Ashley Remkus | Aremkus@al.com, al, 28 Apr. 2021
  • Pitt: somehow facetious and wise at the same time, relishing the noise, as if daring curious onlookers to figure out the answer themselves.
    Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Check out Warrick’s facetious reaction to her aunt’s meet-up with Rihanna below.
    Glenn Rowley, Billboard, 2 Feb. 2022
  • But lyrically, Now Only is stranger, sometimes facetious even.
    Kevin Nguyen, GQ, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Donatella’s appeal—her fame transcends the confines of the fashion bubble—is a many-faceted, flashy, funny, facetious, life-enhancing thing.
    Vogue, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Here the girlhood parallels move beyond the facetious to acquire a darker quality, as shame begins to erode Oppenheimer’s sense of self.
    Iva Dixit, New York Times, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Money also came up in somewhat facetious fashion early in the tribute show, which, for the top-tier ticket holders, came with a reception before and a dinner after the concert.
    Chris Willman, Variety, 15 Jan. 2023
  • Sanders was being facetious, but a presidential candidate has, in fact, faced criticism over a third-grade essay.
    Ryan Teague Beckwith, Bloomberg.com, 5 May 2020
  • This is being somewhat facetious and begrudgingly disrespectful to the players and coaches in the Padres clubhouse trying to win every day.
    Kevin Acee, sandiegouniontribune.com, 25 July 2017
  • The film’s insularity belies what is, in the end, its inclusivity, or at least a facetious stab at inclusion.
    Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post, 18 July 2023
  • In an unusual moment of advocacy for the ever-facetious series, Trump reminded viewers to vote this fall.
    James Hibberd, EW.com, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Merholz was being facetious, of course, not seeking a ticket of admission into the Oxford English Dictionary.
    Ralph Keyes, Time, 1 Apr. 2021
  • Hancock’s contingency plan to add cattle was facetious.
    Tim Sullivan, The Courier-Journal, 10 May 2021
  • But the technological command and the cleverness on display in the colossal fight scenes also undercut their dramatic significance, as do the over-the-top theatrics that tip into the facetious.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 24 Dec. 2021
  • Mustafa Ali hilariously led a facetious cheering section for Dolph Ziggler.
    Alfred Konuwa, Forbes, 6 Mar. 2023
  • The best Injury Reserve songs are always facetious in this way: turning disparity into disruption.
    Sheldon Pearce, The New Yorker, 21 Sep. 2021
  • While a one-vote victory is facetious, the hypothetical ratio of deficit to surplus is an excellent way to see how badly the distribution of voters-by-state punished the losing candidate.
    Time, 17 Sep. 2019
  • An official familiar with the Portland operation said the email was facetious in intent and maintained that there was no difference between the legal authorities governing the Fly Team and those that applied to local agents.
    Mattathias Schwartz, The New York Review of Books, 8 Oct. 2020
  • Spielberg’s own career then seemed upended by misguided egotism, not necessarily his own, but that of a faction hiding behind a facetious pretense of moral values and public trust.
    Armond White, National Review, 10 Dec. 2021

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