How to Use performative in a Sentence

performative

adjective

• What the speech boiled down to is to shine a light on the justice system and that change just can't be performative.
  — Alamin Yohannes, EW.com, 24 Jan. 2023
• Taking the stage in a red gown, Lee showcased the single with a live band and a performative sense of flair.
  — Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 8 Dec. 2023
• There’s the performative aspect of it, but no one lets that get in the way of the spirit of the competition.
  — John Shea, San Francisco Chronicle, 18 Sep. 2022
• But Migos made the style sound fresh, less performative and more glossy.
  — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2022
• These notes are cozy and performative and a little dorky, the kind of thinky seduction that Ephron writes best.
  — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 15 Aug. 2022
• But Hawkins said many of those vows to change proved to be more performative than productive.
  — USA TODAY, 14 Aug. 2023
• Helfrich is quick to warn that the debates can’t be performative.
  — Anna Oakes, Quartz, 6 June 2023
• There’s nothing about it that should feel performative in any way.
  — Los Angeles Times, 9 Aug. 2022
• Each band was firmly in its creative and performative prime that night.
  — Rory Appleton, The Indianapolis Star, 11 May 2023
• Once detected, the performative aroma of this style is hard to shake.
  — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 7 Sep. 2023
• Others had less faith in the scores to begin with and found the exercise largely performative.
  — Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post, 4 May 2023
• Brands need to be performative to succeed in a social media world.
  — Adam Hanft, Fortune, 25 Jan. 2024
• The presentations got more performative as the day went on.
  — Phoebe Connelly, Washington Post, 29 Jan. 2024
• This is as much a physical attack as a performative one: Watch us, Hamas seems to be saying.
  — Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic, 7 Oct. 2023
• The next five months will test how much of a desire there is by voters for Boebert’s brand of performative politics.
  — David Mark, Washington Examiner, 12 Jan. 2024
• So where does that leave those of us, like me, for whom mom friendships have felt forced, performative, fraught, and just like more emotional labor?
  — Hannah Seligson, ELLE, 27 Feb. 2023
• But Wu’s presence at the event was hardly performative.
  — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 8 June 2022
• Downstairs things get a little more performative with late-night karaoke.
  — Meagan Drillinger, Travel + Leisure, 12 July 2023
• There was nothing performative about it, which some weddings can be.
  — Anna Moeslein, Glamour, 15 Apr. 2022
• The third movement, the Adagio, rose to an agony of sorrow that felt private rather than performative; dissonances shuddered and splintered in the air.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 30 Nov. 2022
• At that, the crowd groans collectively, but not in an overtly performative way.
  — Philip Martin, Arkansas Online, 13 Dec. 2022
• And through that, even selfishly, finding new people to inspire us by being a part of a thing that feels real, rather than part of a thing that feels performative.
  — Katie Bain, Billboard, 13 Aug. 2022
• To some, this phenomenon is a signal that wine drinking has become too performative, and less about the love of wine itself.
  — Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Apr. 2023
• While our culture prizes loud and brash, some of the most interesting and needed people are not performative.
  — Meghan Leahy, Anchorage Daily News, 2 Apr. 2023
• Some people think that, in order to be sincere, something can’t also be showy and performative.
  — Stephen Daw, Billboard, 8 Apr. 2022
• And within the film, the whole idea of an artist being performative and performing confidence is important to me.
  — Vulture, 26 Aug. 2022
• Madam is splendidly performative in flavor and presentation, but the masterpiece of the place is the dessert menu.
  — Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press, 10 Feb. 2022
• The ways of performative politics and media prey on unformed minds.
  — Lance Morrow, WSJ, 27 July 2022
• Is Julia Fox—performative and charming—a modern-day Wallis Simpson, one of the most famous clotheshorses of all time?
  — Rory Satran, WSJ, 9 July 2022
• Anyone weary of cringe-y, performative displays of bien-pensant thinking might crack a smile — or let loose a belly laugh.
  — Seth Colter Walls, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2022

Last Updated: 28 May 2024