CYNICAL in a Sentence

Learn CYNICAL from example sentences, some of them are from classic books. These examples are selected from a corpus with 300,000 sentences, including classic works and current mainstream media. Some sentences also link to their contexts.

For CYNICAL, below is one of 46 sentences:
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical.

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 Meanings and Examples of CYNICAL
Definition Example Sentence Classic Sentence
cynical
 a.  skeptical of motives of others; selfishly calculating; negative or pessimistic
Classic Sentence: (35 in 3 pages)
1  There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER VI
2  His eyes waited on her words, cynical amusement in them, and she could not go on.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER IX
3  He had changed from her friend to a cynical man in overalls.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XI
4  She was cynical about the joys of a simple laborious life.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXIV
5  The captain introduced her to the secretary of a congressman, a cynical young widow with many acquaintances in the navy.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXXVII
6  Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXXVII
7  If enough of us do this impolitely enough, then we'll become civilized in merely twenty thousand years or so, instead of having to wait the two hundred thousand years that my cynical anthropologist friends allow.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXXVIII
8  During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap.
Moby Dick By Herman Melville
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
9  Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical.
My Antonia By Willa Cather
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 3. Lena Lingard: IV
10  Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be doctored.
The Jungle By Upton Sinclair
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 3
11  Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me.
The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 7
12  He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of.
The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 9
13  He had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 18
14  The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 3
15  In those cynical words there was indeed a grain of truth.
Anna Karenina 2 By Leo Tolstoy
Context  Highlight   In PART 6: Chapter 16
Example Sentence:
1  With that cynical outlook, he doesn't trust anyone.
2  I think she takes a rather cynical view of men.
3  Christmas should be a time of excitement and wonder, not a cynical marketing ploy.
4  It was a strange conjunction — the prim serious young Queen and the elderly, cynical Whig.
5  I hope I don't sound unduly cynical.
6  What I find sad, and cynical, is that this guy is essentially saying things will not be better by 2012.
7  Sophisticated and cynical, Jack could not believe Jill was as artless and naive as she appeared to be.
8  Without wisdom, cynicism is only another way of being stupid.
9  The rich youth cynically declared that the panacea for all speeding tickets was a big enough bribe.
10  They cynically tried to trade off a reduction in the slaughter of dolphins against a resumption of commercial whaling.
11  Some cynics say that sport is a mere instrument of capitalist domination.