How to Use magisterial in a Sentence

magisterial

adjective
  • He spoke with a magisterial tone.
  • Elba is always magisterial, and for years now, his fans have been floating his name as a candidate for the next James Bond.
    Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 2 Apr. 2021
  • One always looks as fast as one can to the magisterial Cooper Union or the spinning black public sculpture.
    Jerry Saltz, Curbed, 13 July 2021
  • The horns were magisterial, their brass colleagues full and resilient.
    Zachary Lewis, cleveland.com, 15 July 2019
  • Her singing voice is a magisterial thing — epic and portentous, even a little scary.
    Owen Myers, EW.com, 30 June 2022
  • The building's setting along a riverside promenade was magisterial and yet for everyone, from kings and queens to Ronald Binge's man in the street.
    Jonathan Glancey, CNN, 17 Sep. 2022
  • Roberts has so far played only a magisterial role in the proceedings.
    Ephrat Livni, Quartz, 27 Jan. 2020
  • But then the song thickens up in its fourth minute with bleary, magisterial piano, and Yorke switches his vocal approach.
    Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 29 June 2019
  • The fact that it's been covered by punk bands, lounge singers, and indie stars is further testament to its magisterial mystery.
    Debby Wolfinsohn, EW.com, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Ruest also replaced the magisterial district judge who had twice thrown out charges.
    Washington Post, 8 July 2018
  • Groupies, doormen, hippies, astronauts, bankers and frat boys took on a magisterial presence in his writing, and if there was a hint of hypocrisy in their actions, then all the better.
    Thomas Curwen, sacbee, 15 May 2018
  • Most days, the memorial is just crowded, crammed with tourists and school groups climbing to see the magisterial sculpture of a sitting Abraham Lincoln.
    National Geographic, 9 June 2020
  • Not so in soloist Paul Jacobs’ magisterial playing of the organ part, which built to a thrilling roar of low pedal sonority in the final pages that must have set off every seismograph in the state.
    John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 12 May 2018
  • The spire of flowers, in its full glory, has long felt to me like a hint of regal splendor, and fittingly, this magisterial tree is called the Magnolia Elizabeth.
    BostonGlobe.com, 6 May 2022
  • This magisterial work focuses on the failure to prevent World War II.
    Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs, 1 Nov. 2022
  • Spencer’s work has a magisterial quality; some of it has the feel of photographic painting.
    Dominique Browning, New York Times, 29 May 2017
  • But what was striking was not just his message, of love and inclusion; or his tone, which was soaring and magisterial; or his obvious delight in the matter at hand.
    Sarah Lyall, New York Times, 19 May 2018
  • What’s happened since then is a useful reminder of the influence that one magisterial player exerts over the entire league.
    Ben Cohen, WSJ, 15 Nov. 2018
  • Shortly thereafter, Churchill did just that, penning a magisterial six-volume series on the Second World War.
    Tod Worner, National Review, 17 Oct. 2021
  • LitHub has the full essay: A work of art has a magisterial quality about it, a justifying élan which grants virtue to imitation.
    Constance Grady, Vox, 2 June 2018
  • With any Kubrick work, there’s a magisterial sense of control and overreach present in every frame, an approach that helped make him the (sometimes clichéd) embodiment of the auteur filmmaker.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2017
  • Magisterial as the literal lord of the manor, his Sir John Talbot dominates from the sidelines as bodies pile up every full moon in the forests within trotting distance of his estate.
    Hugh Hart, WIRED, 11 Feb. 2010
  • In the journal Nature, journalist Jeff Tollefson recently offered that magisterial overview of the climate challenge and the progress that’s been made so far.
    David Roberts, Vox, 30 Apr. 2018
  • The eight-movement suite was a wonderful study in contrasts, from the magisterial Sarabande to the aggressive, quicksilver filigree of the final Gigue.
    Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register, 22 Apr. 2017
  • In 1984, Lay was in the process of building a magisterial estate in California when his interior designer alerted him to the existence of The Tree.
    Ellen Ruppel Shell, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2022
  • As the movement progressed, the interpretation took on an epic scale, the basses growling, the upper strings magisterial in fugal passages.
    Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 27 Sep. 2019
  • That curtain — a magisterial gold cloth — clues us into parts of the show’s purpose and intention, reflecting the promise and possibility of the outside world.
    Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The journalist and historian Paul Johnson wrote more than 50 books, many of them magisterial surveys, such as Modern Times, a history of the world during the 20th century.
    John Fund, National Review, 15 Jan. 2023
  • Ten of his magisterial Beauty World paintings dominate the main gallery: larger-than-life mannequin heads, transformed by sculpture-like wigs and evocative makeup.
    Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, 1 Apr. 2021
  • The problem with this priest — one of them, anyway — may not be an excess of spiritual fervor but rather a dearth of it, a lack of reverence for the beauty that Pálmason’s camera exalts in every magisterial frame.
    Justin Changfilm Critic, Los Angeles Times, 9 Feb. 2023

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