How to Use fictive in a Sentence

fictive

adjective
  • Yet fictive kin are supposed to have a relationship with a child, whereas Ricardo didn’t know the woman.
    Deborah Sontag, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2024
  • In the opera, the character singing the excerpts is Gepopo, the head of espionage for the fictive Prince Go-Go.
    Anne Midgette, Washington Post, 4 July 2019
  • Sometimes the leads barely seem to be in the same movie, let alone the same fictive family.
    Dennis Harvey, Variety, 17 Mar. 2022
  • There’s no part of our lives that is exempt from this kind of fictive world-making.
    Sean Illing, Vox, 4 Nov. 2018
  • The Imus show was a way to listen in on the chatter at a fictive clubhouse of the rich and influential.
    Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 27 Dec. 2019
  • Kentucky will now allow the courts the leeway to place these children with fictive kin.
    Matt Bevin, Cincinnati.com, 16 May 2017
  • Real and fictive kinship was central to this form of state building.
    Sean T. Byrnes, The New Republic, 7 Feb. 2023
  • One trait, though, might bond them: Both fictive and palpable monsters are hated.
    Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, 31 Oct. 2023
  • Those vivid particulars were the stuff of Mrs. Palatschinke’s fictive magic, the sheer pluck and verve that conjured up a complete world out of absences, an easier world to dwell on.
    Lauren Markham, Harper's Magazine, 16 Mar. 2021
  • Yet there is a still deeper bond that keeps this unhappy couple — and other fictive pairs much like them — together.
    Fred Schruers, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2022
  • More obscure is the bronze historical plaque out on the salt flats dedicated to the fictive characters Eddgar and Benn.
    Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Often a blend of straight biography and semi-fictive point of view, Smith's dramas have been about disparate topics.
    Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 4 May 2017
  • That’s an effect of the place’s having been a home, the mansion of the coke mogul Henry Clay Frick, and of the somewhat fictive sense of the collection’s memorializing one person’s passions: pre-loved, call it.
    Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 2021
  • Her latest, Heaux Tales, is a work of fictive brilliance and relatability.
    Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2021
  • Descent-groups, whether real or fictive, loom large in the human imagination.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 27 Dec. 2011
  • Contagion is a fictive work that came out almost ten years ago, but its twisty plot has definitely taken on new relevance in the wake of the coronavirus.
    Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 29 Jan. 2020
  • The more glaring contrast between American and British law enforcement—both real and fictive—is the near-total absence of handguns in Britain.
    Christopher Orr, The Atlantic, 11 Oct. 2020
  • Again, Eng—who was born in Penang in 1972, of Straits Chinese ancestry—nicely splices the historical record with various fictive weavings.
    James Wood, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
  • An image or phrase finds you, pleases you with its wit or vividness, shoehorns open your evolving vision of the fictive world, and before that change gets fully processed, here comes another.
    George Saunders, The New Yorker, 3 Mar. 2017
  • For DeKnight, that love extended to black readers who had never seen their families’ recipes in print—as well as black people for whom kin, fictive or otherwise, is not a source of sustenance.
    Hannah Giorgis, Bon Appetit, 19 June 2018
  • But wait, a twist reveals Quichotte is himself a fictive creation, a character written by spy novelist Sam DuChamp.
    Annabel Gutterman, Time, 30 Aug. 2019
  • The fictive belief that non-nerd family and friends will flock to Facebook-like alternatives through word-of-mouth simply because Facebook holds too much power is laughable.
    Steven Aquino, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2021
  • Since the debut of Black-ish, however, Barris has not found new ways to examine himself and his family within the fictive universe he’s created.
    Shamira Ibrahim, The Atlantic, 26 Apr. 2020
  • An admirer of Sherlock Holmes (whose fictive hyper-rationalism might be a sign of Asperger’s), Christopher aims to solve two mysteries: the fate of his long-absent mother and the killing of a neighborhood dog.
    Misha Berson, The Seattle Times, 26 July 2017
  • Other exhibits, equipped with screens — rather like video games — challenge players to stop a fictive epidemic threatening Quebec, or to catch an antelope (like the cave people did) to feed their families.
    New York Times, 11 June 2018
  • Jerry West demanded a retraction and an apology from HBO over the overheated, fictive way he is depicted.
    Kurt Streeter, New York Times, 25 Apr. 2022
  • War onscreen, whether fictive or documentary, is often a sort of highlight reel: the excitement and terror of battle, cities in flames, the devastated aftermath.
    Dennis Harvey, Variety, 13 Nov. 2023
  • Maud Newton has a keen appreciation for the fictive quality of stories about ancestry.
    Maya Jasanoff, The New Yorker, 2 May 2022
  • Danhausen’s dubious command of occult forces is only one aspect of his absurd presentation, which blurs the line between what is supposed to be real in the fictive world of pro wrestling and what is supposed to be his character’s own delusion.
    Peter Rubin, Longreads, 10 Jan. 2023
  • Naturally, this is often fictive, but that matters little.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 30 Nov. 2022

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