How to Use puckish in a Sentence

puckish

adjective
  • He had a puckish smile on his face.
  • Ismail’s Louis is as squirmy as a worm, then puckish as a sprite in his flirtations with Joe.
    Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Apr. 2018
  • With a puckish sense of humor, fate placed Strange at the scene of his diminishment.
    Marcus Hayes, Philly.com, 18 June 2018
  • Vinny’s website presents its loafers in a puckish manner, styled with white socks and checked trousers.
    Jacob Gallagher, WSJ, 7 June 2021
  • In the show, Mr. Ed had a puckish sense of humor but abstained from alcohol and no longer had a streak of nihilism.
    Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2020
  • Those who knew him well said the gruff exterior concealed a shy man with a puckish wit.
    New York Times, 9 Dec. 2019
  • In the yard, several small bronze sculptures of Benglis’s — squat, pocked, puckish — were scattered around the garden.
    Sasha Weiss Sasha Weiss Photographs By Justin French Nick Haramis Photographs By Lise Sarfati Styled By Suzanne Koller Adam Bradley Photographs By D’angelo Lovell Williams Styled By Ian Bradley Susan Dominus Photographs By Luis Alberto Rodriguez Styled By Charlotte Collet, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Bambi is the star, but a puckish, toothy, yellow-nosed rabbit named Thumper almost hops off with the picture.
    Lily Rothman, Time, 1 Jan. 1950
  • Feeling puckish after strolling the L.L. Bean campus in Freeport?
    Pamela Wright, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Mar. 2021
  • The best have a puckish joyousness, even when the material is dark.
    Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2019
  • The lead guitar sounds less like a guitar than a bizarro dial tone — a round, rich, buzzing that Sohn spins into puckish, prickly riffs.
    Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 21 Sep. 2022
  • With this at the top of his mind, even the most eye-popping set piece becomes a puckish way of speaking truth to power — like a very, very elaborate prank.
    Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2022
  • The latter returns for a second season with the puckish Tom Hiddleston in the title role.
    Nina Metz, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Sep. 2023
  • Ancient deities endure in many forms, as two artists observe in the show’s most puckish offerings.
    Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 16 Oct. 2020
  • But his lines have softened with age; his manner has grown puckish and approachable.
    Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • One is struck, amid the sombre events, by the joyous, puckish restlessness of the storytelling, which seems to stick to a character’s point of view only to veer away, mid-sentence.
    James Wood, The New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2021
  • His work has been all over the place quality-wise, yet Smoking distills his punkish, puckish vibe down to one big pop-cultural goof.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 1 Apr. 2023
  • Another highlight is the title track, an ode to a puckish invisible friend who takes the heat for our childhood misdeeds.
    Jordan Runtagh, PEOPLE.com, 14 Jan. 2022
  • But of course there are really many Mark Floods, with different names and practices: the painter, the writer, the musician, the punk, the satirist, the champion of the art world, the puckish critic of the art world and its absurdities.
    Robert Boyd, Chron, 2 Mar. 2023
  • That kind of puckish, mildly subversive humor runs throughout the book, which is a calm and sagacious volume rendered somewhat somber by the news of his passing.
    Steve Donoghue, The Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 2019
  • For reasons unclear to me, Dickon (played by John-Michael Lyles) is reconceived in the musical to be more aggressively puckish.
    Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 28 Feb. 2023
  • Mysterious shapes in the shrubbery add humor to this puckish escapade for children ages 3-6.
    Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 27 May 2022
  • Today in London, that ethos translated to a parade of punkish, puckish models with eyes framed in graphic eyeshadow in shades of hot pink and cream.
    Calin Van Paris, Vogue, 14 Feb. 2020
  • For 35 years, the Brackenridge Park sky ride carried thousands of puckish youths, frisky lovebirds and occasional fraidy-cats.
    René A. Guzman, San Antonio Express-News, 26 Nov. 2021
  • George knows sign language and has a puckish sense of humor, and Davis’ conversations with him have a rough, familial dynamic.
    Tasha Robinson, The Verge, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Across the table from him sat Somer, and next to him, my father, who, though still deeply mourning the loss of my mother, was able to at least try to be his usual, puckish self, employing swears like the rest of us use prepositions.
    Nicole Avant, Rolling Stone, 28 Oct. 2023
  • The author displays an engaging, puckish sense of humor.
    David Barash, WSJ, 21 July 2017
  • But this one is set in a nursing home, a puckish acknowledgment that everyone in the Scorsese universe has gotten a little (OK, a lot) older.
    Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic, 11 Dec. 2019
  • While it’s set in our extended pre-apocalyptic present, the movie, equal parts puckish and poignant, pushes the conversation forward.
    Eleanor Cummins, The New Republic, 5 Jan. 2022
  • Just as notable as Cox’s puckish attitude was the clothing selected for his Late Show appearance.
    Eric Twardzik, Robb Report, 19 Apr. 2023

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