How to Use serial in a Sentence

serial

1 of 2 adjective

• The pictures are numbered and arranged in serial order.
• Scientists made serial observations over a period of two weeks.
• Read: Are you plagued by the serial get-out-of-debt disorder?
  — Michelle Singletary, Washington Post, 2 Oct. 2023
• Like a serial killer taking over a town and leaving death in his wake.
  — The Indianapolis Star, 16 Mar. 2023
• Of course, the key problem is how to pick, which way to swipe, is the person a serial killer or a chef with two Michelin stars.
  — Neil Senturia, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Dec. 2023
• And, believe it or not, serial killer Joe appears to not be at fault.
  — Meg Walters, Glamour, 10 Mar. 2023
• The serial killings spanned four days -- from Sunday to Wednesday.
  — Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 2 Dec. 2023
• The police were looking for a serial killer and had their eyes set on 17-year-old Richard Buckland.
  — Sofia Quaglia, Discover Magazine, 26 Oct. 2023
• By the end of the first episode, Marissa is gone and Dre has taken a sharp left turn toward life as a ruthless serial killer.
  — Stuart Miller, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Mar. 2023
• Even more surprising is the fact that his victim was a serial killer.
  — Joan MacDonald, Forbes, 10 Feb. 2024
• Sweeney Todd, a serial killer, displayed one; so did Booth and Oswald.
  — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 23 Oct. 2023
• The serial killer fatally shot Ronald Felton, 60, the next month.
  — Aliza Chasan, CBS News, 1 May 2023
• Palm turned them all away, making her story a white whale even in our era of peak serial killer content.
  — Carolyn Wells, Longreads, 14 Aug. 2023
• But for three or four hours every Sunday, this is where absorb the serial drama of the season.
  — Michael MacCambridge, Kansas City Star, 30 Jan. 2024
• The police start a serial killer hunt throughout the country as the pair continue on to find her family.
  — Selena Kuznikov, Variety, 9 Apr. 2024
• The Cottons, their hopes dashed after the serial killer proved to be a dead end, were left with their original suspicions.
  — Shaila Dewan Madeleine Hordinski, New York Times, 8 Feb. 2024
• Last year, Carpio likened the suspect in the slayings to Ted Bundy, the prolific serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of girls and young women in the 1970s.
  — Alex Riggins, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 July 2023
• Actor Ashton Kutcher was the witness in the murder trial of a serial killer.
  — Michael Ruiz, Fox News, 9 Apr. 2024
• To do so, the trio starts a true crime podcast to help catch a serial killer terrorizing Los Angeles.
  — Jada Kennzie, USA TODAY, 6 June 2023
• How many serial killers kill in their own neighborhoods?
  — oregonlive, 8 May 2023
• That the plot concerns a serial killer picking off the population of elite Los Angeles prep school students in the mid-’80s, of course, helps.
  — Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 Dec. 2023
• In Bright Young Women, a serial killer on the loose brings together two women in pursuit of justice.
  — Katie Bowlby, Country Living, 29 July 2023
• Glover reportedly got the idea for a Black female serial killer character from a viral tweet, then pitched the idea to Nabers.
  — Erica Gonzales, ELLE, 23 Mar. 2023
• The serial killer reportedly confessed to the murder in 2006.
  — Brenton Blanchet, Peoplemag, 5 Oct. 2023
• This context, and a high level of craft, are what elevate Last Call above the realm of a mere serial killer procedural.
  — Chris Vognar, Rolling Stone, 9 July 2023
• The expecting couple decides to host a serial killer on their true-crime podcast as a way to make extra cash, and high jinks ensue.
  — Lauryn Azu, Chicago Tribune, 8 June 2023
• The remains of seven other women were found in the same area within the next year, and police suspected that at least some of the bodies were left by a serial killer.
  — Maham Javaid, Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2024
• My elderly dad, a serial cheater, moved in with his girlfriend (who is my age) and divorced my mom (who was dying of lymphoma).
  — Amy Dickinson, Washington Post, 1 May 2023
• Walk across the street to get a glimpse of the bricked building that previously housed Nichol’s Hardware Store (where the fictional serial killer steals his murder weapons).
  — Danielle Directo-Meston, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Oct. 2023
• The first snowfall of winter brings with it a sinister snowman, signaling the return of a serial killer.
  — David Nikel, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024

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serial

2 of 2 noun

• A year before the book came out, the story ran as a serial.
  — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 29 Oct. 2021
• There wasn’t a drama, a soap, a serial or a chat show that could do that.
  — Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, Quartz India, 22 July 2019
• Cleophus is the second serial-killing suspect to be arrested in Phoenix in the past year.
  — Chris Harris, PEOPLE.com, 18 Jan. 2018
• Holmes worked on many of the serial’s scripts and regularly put herself in harm’s way.
  — Elizabeth Weitzman, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Apr. 2023
• Hopefully, this reboot will charm audiences in the same way that the first radio serial did back in the 1970s.
  — Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 24 July 2019
• Justin’s serial dating continued well into the night, and the girls found out about date number four, thanks to the bartender.
  — Michelle Darrisaw, Southern Living, 10 Aug. 2017
• One last distinction, and maybe the most important: This, for once, was a true-crime serial made in the urgent hope that there not be a sequel.
  — New York Times, 10 June 2022
• Typically, this is the sort of terrain that would be covered by a vintage beat-cop serial, which gets us to the elephant in the room.
  — Luke Winkie, Rolling Stone, 19 Mar. 2023
• There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays.
  — Robert Gottlieb, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
• The serial will be available for online viewing through May 2021.
  — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 19 Oct. 2020
• In the new series, Bomer plays Michael, a loving father to a serial-killing high school girl and husband to a frustrated co-parent.
  — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 13 Aug. 2021
• In 1996, he was cast to portray Cassadine for the serial, kicking off his soap-star career.
  — Emily St. Martin, Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 2023
• The model has some echoes of the way many Charles Dickens’s novels were first published: as serials in magazines.
  — Jacky Wong, WSJ, 17 Oct. 2017
• The story unfolds over the course of 20 brief chapters, reflecting the rhythm of its original run as a serial, cliffhangers and all.
  — Penny Schwartz, sun-sentinel.com, 6 Oct. 2021
• Tuesday marked 37 years since Margaret delighted soap opera fans with a guest-starring turn on the beloved British serial The Archers.
  — Lanford Beard, PEOPLE.com, 23 June 2021
• The other two game-changers were and remain triumphs of recycling, of stripping ’30s and ’40s serials for parts, and speeding up the rhythms.
  — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 24 Aug. 2017
• French Montana shared a snapshot posing with the serial fraudster aboard a private jet.
  — PEOPLE.com, 8 Feb. 2022
• Time commitment: This serial has two dozen 45-minute episodes.
  — Philly.com, 16 July 2017
• In the 1930s, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comics and movie theater serials portrayed lasers as weapons decades before a working laser had even been invented.
  — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 11 Mar. 2016
• Both movies are freestanding, non-serial, complete, and integral dramas that run about an hour and a half each.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 24 Apr. 2017
• The move is a bet on repeating the success of Marvel (where Millarworld Mark Millar spent eight years) in spinning movies and serials off its comics.
  — Alan Murray, Fortune, 8 Aug. 2017
• An accused serial bank robber from Missouri is in custody in Alabama, accused of three holdups here and many more outside of the state.
  — Carol Robinson | [e-mail], al, 23 Aug. 2019
• Fantomas was first adapted for the big screen by into a silent crime film serial directed by Louis Feuillade for Gaumont in 1913.
  — Elsa Keslassy, Variety, 10 Aug. 2022
• This fire, along with other lesser fires in the decade, led authorities to believe a serial arsonist was on the loose in Laurel.
  — Kevin Leonard, baltimoresun.com, 23 Apr. 2021
• A serial peeping Tom in Rock Hill who was out on bond after a June 9 arrest on a charge of voyeurism has been arrested again, according to police and jail records.
  — Andrew Dys, charlotteobserver, 19 June 2017
• Long enough to develop an idea, short enough to focus on a single strand of plot, novellas (and serials) got the spotlight in almost every issue.
  — Tom Shippey, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2019
• Though his presence loomed large in the world of comics, as his creations went mainstream, Lee became familiar to even those who’d never picked up a weekly serial.
  — Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 12 Nov. 2018
• In 1986, the role earned him two Soap Opera Digest Awards — for outstanding actor in a leading role and for outstanding villain on a daytime serial.
  — Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 14 Nov. 2022
• Even Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials, of which these films are in a sense the modern version, worked harder to bring generalists up to speed.
  — Carlos De Loera, Los Angeles Times, 19 Nov. 2023
• The character has proven quite popular, appearing in comics, serials and, of course, movies and television.
  — Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov. 2023

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024