How to Use phlegmatic in a Sentence

phlegmatic

adjective

• The windows stay black and phlegmatic as the air outside begins to heave with rain.
  — Colin Channer, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2020
• Both the phlegmatic Pliny the Younger and the priapic and ill-fated Diocles also have their say.
  — Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine, 17 Aug. 2021
• Whether his phlegmatic sales pitch, coming in the final week before Super Tuesday, will be enough to lift him up remains to be seen.
  — New York Times, 28 Feb. 2020
• Bumgarner put his hands on his knees and cursed, a rare show of frustration for this phlegmatic and competitive man.
  — Michael Powell, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2016
• Sandler is by nature a performer in two tempi at once: beneath the phlegmatic, sardonic lag of his speech and gestures, the wheels are spinning at overdrive in his mind.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2021
• Johnson was, as usual, unkempt and amused, a tornado of bonhomie in a country where politicians tend to be phlegmatic and self-serious, if not dour and awkward.
  — Tom McTague, The Atlantic, 7 June 2021
• The dancers were unassisted by a somewhat phlegmatic rendition of Paul Hindemith's score by the Chicago Philharmonic.
  — Irene Hsiao, Chicago Reader, 8 Feb. 2018
• When a cardiologist prescribes swimming five days a week, the phlegmatic Birbiglia argues that such a regimen would overwhelm even Michael Phelps.
  — Los Angeles Times, 8 Aug. 2022
• While Putin saw these events as cataclysmic, Merkel already seemed to have the strangely phlegmatic attitude toward grand ideas of history that would characterize her sixteen-year reign as chancellor of the united Germany.
  — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 18 Oct. 2021
• Thomas — as Joan was originally known — was candid but excitable and arrogant; Peter, devious but phlegmatic and cordial.
  — New York Times, 1 July 2021
• One of Banky’s first public murals to receive widespread attention portrayed a phlegmatic Teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at riot police.
  — oregonlive, 4 Apr. 2022
• Instead his Paterno is a phlegmatic Lear, an old man attempting to hide from an unsavory reality in what had always been his retreat and obsession — football.
  — Frank Fitzpatrick, Philly.com, 6 Apr. 2018
• In the current moment, Representative Maxine Waters, who is decidedly more phlegmatic than Jordan, has been slotted into this role.
  — Brittney Cooper, Cosmopolitan, 7 Aug. 2017
• Orwell’s increasingly phlegmatic and introverted personality, combined with a fierce idealism and a devotion to accuracy in writing, brought him as a writer to fight to protect a private place in that modern world.
  — Mary Ann Gwinn, chicagotribune.com, 31 May 2017
• The topic is Hippocrates’ psychological prototypes — melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic and choleric — based on ancient beliefs in four corresponding humors: black bile, blood, phlegm and yellow bile.
  — Lauren Warnecke, chicagotribune.com, 8 Feb. 2018
• The interview – as well as Stahl's globetrotting investigation to find Marcel's family – are shown at length in the film, and will surely delight anyone who's familiar with her phlegmatic delivery and meticulous reporting.
  — Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 27 June 2022
• Neither hyperactive grandstanding in Paris nor phlegmatic passivity from Berlin has prevented the emergence of a common Western position.
  — Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 21 Feb. 2022
• The Diamondbacks’ approach heading into the 2021 season was decidedly phlegmatic.
  — Tony Blengino, Forbes, 12 Nov. 2021
• By contrast, big businessmen, in the book, exhibit an odd combination of idealism, a crippling inability to be anything but phlegmatic in public, and emotional vulnerability.
  — Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker, 31 May 2021
• Yet, even so phlegmatic a personality as DiMaggio eventually yielded to temptation.
  — Steven Goldman, Slate Magazine, 7 Sep. 2017
• Such audacities were otherwise quashed in Holbein’s supervening duties to phlegmatic patrons.
  — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 21 Feb. 2022
• Australia’s normally phlegmatic society has been shaken.
  — The Economist, 9 Jan. 2020
• Why would a man live like this? Alone on the godforsaken prairie surrounded by whispering cornfields and phlegmatic Swedes if instead you could go to picture shows and snazzy restaurants and dance with a beautiful woman with her head on your shoulder and her perfume driving you wild?
  — Garrison Keillor, WLT: A Radio Romance, 1991
• Massimiliano Allegri, given the circumstances, was surprisingly phlegmatic.
  — New York Times, 27 Aug. 2021

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024