toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

vicarious
in a sentence

show 58 more with this conextual meaning
  • Well, since my own love life is in the dumps, I have to live vicariously through you.†   (source)
  • Those who weren't expecting visits would plant themselves on the stairs anyway to observe the comings and goings, as a source of vicarious entertainment—they could generally identify any regulars on sight.†   (source)
  • And Ed had lived vicariously through Harlon's exploits on the football field.†   (source)
  • Olive screamed and several of us flinched in vicarious pain as Horace dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, loose change and train tickets spilling out of his pockets.†   (source)
  • Saintly Amma's vision now felt like a pipe dream, a vicarious evangelism so ill informed that Sister Mary Joseph Praise was embarrassed to mention it to Thomas Stone.†   (source)
  • But this first experience had been so shocking that most of the information was pushed aside by the raw experience of living vicariously through another mind.†   (source)
  • My job at that moment was clear: I was to relate my adventure, and in the retelling of what had happened so far, they would get to vicariously ride a bicycle across America--a thrill they secretly desired but would never do.†   (source)
  • He doesn't want vicarious satisfaction.†   (source)
  • School was my solace, and studying let me escape, allowing me to live a thousand vicarious lives.†   (source)
  • I knew it had something to do with my being his vicarious counterpart in the game he was too small to play.†   (source)
  • After five, nothing awaited her except lovebirds, tropical fish, and vicarious journeys back to more romantic centuries via historical novels.†   (source)
  • After the noise subsided above, I saw that it was past noon and at the same time realized that both the fornication and the fracas had in some urgent, vicarious way made me incredibly hungry, as if I had actually partaken in whatever had taken place up there.†   (source)
  • I've seen this kind bellow for blood at a prize fight, have orgasms when a man is gored in the bull ring, stare with vicarious lust at a highway accident, stand patiently in line for the privilege of watching any pain or any agony.†   (source)
  • The crowd, full of good feeling, replete with food and drunk with the music, vicariously excited, pressed round, eagerly thrusting over their heads garland after garland of flowers; the earth was spattered with petals.†   (source)
  • In towns women like her live vicariously in the lives of the film stars.†   (source)
  • "But sometimes," he said, "I can't help but think that you live vicariously through his antics, and I must say that it hurts me."   (source)
    vicariously = experiencing life secondhand
  • Experience is the most valuable commodity, and she who gains it vicariously, is wisest.
  • It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.   (source)
  • The book is full of romance and vicarious thrills.
  • I think it's more like she's living vicariously.†   (source)
  • What rich art collectors like to buy, among other things, is a little vicarious craziness.†   (source)
  • Even vicariously this was an eminence we could hardly stand.†   (source)
  • She has the air of a professional guide for whom the ravishments of, say, Niagara Falls have become a commonplace, but who hopes to enjoy vicariously the raptures of visiting neophytes.†   (source)
  • It could even have been sent by someone who got some sort of vicarious thrill by making lonely women cry on distant beaches.†   (source)
  • "But right now, I'm having plenty of fun living vicariously through you since my love life is pretty much nonexistent.†   (source)
  • But if this is true I cannot disguise, either, the vicarious pleasure I take in thinking that you, growing to be the writer I yearned to be but could not, might have such a splendid chance to live on that land, to feel and see and smell the very earth which gave birth to that dim and prodigious black man ….†   (source)
  • Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations.†   (source)
  • It was probably just peaceful despair and relief at final and complete abnegation, now that Judith was about to immolate the frustration's vicarious recompense into the living fairy tale.†   (source)
  • So, only half resigned to her fate, she spent most of her time with Scarlett, vicariously enjoying a pregnancy not her own.†   (source)
  • The priest hurriedly whispered the words of conditional absolution, in case, for one second before it crossed the border, the spirit had repented, but it was more likely that it had gone over still seeking its knife, bent on vicarious violence.†   (source)
  • If the Lincoln legend gathers strength from its similarity to the Christian theme of vicarious atonement and redemption, there is still another strain in American experience that it represents equally well.†   (source)
  • The same point can be made with respect to kitsch literature: it provides vicarious experience for the insensitive with far greater immediacy than serious fiction can hope to do.†   (source)
  • Yet this was where she had to go to get the material to make those intimate young girl garments which were to be for her own vicarious bridal—and you can imagine too what Miss Rosa's notions of such garments would be, let alone what her notion of them would look like when she had finished them unassisted.†   (source)
  • …as the object of that complete and abnegant devotion which only a youth, never a woman, gives to another youth or a man; who for exactly a year now had seen the sister succumb to that same spell which the brother had already succumbed to, and this with no volition on the seducer's part, without so much as the lifting of a finger, as though it actually were the brother who had put the spell on the sister, seduced her to his own vicarious image which walked and breathed with Bon's body.†   (source)
  • No. We did not need him, not even vicariously, who could not even join him in his furious (that almost mad intention which he brought home with him, seemed to project, radiate ahead of him before be even dismounted) desire to restore the place to what it had been that he had sacrificed pity and gentleness and love and all the soft virtues for—if he had ever had them to sacrifice, felt their lack, desired them of others.†   (source)
  • It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.†   (source)
  • For your bad deeds, vicarious atonement, mercy without justice.†   (source)
  • She had vicarious happiness in the return of Major Raymond Wutherspoon.†   (source)
  • Standing in the station, with Paris in back of them, it seemed as if they were vicariously leaning a little over the ocean, already undergoing a sea-change, a shifting about of atoms to form the essential molecule of a new people.†   (source)
  • As it was precisely of that love that poor Winsett was starving to death, Archer looked with a sort of vicarious envy at this eager impecunious young man who had fared so richly in his poverty.†   (source)
  • When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.†   (source)
  • Carol was shuddering with the vicarious shame which sensitive people feel when they listen to an "elocutionist" being humorous, or to a precocious child publicly doing badly what no child should do at all.†   (source)
  • Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fang divined that it was his master's food he ate and that it was his master who thus fed him vicariously.†   (source)
  • Whether any one got into the omnibus or not was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs. Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow vicariously made use of it.†   (source)
  • Yet these pious works were, at the same time, an end in themselves, and the satisfaction he found in feeding porridge to sickly Frau Mallinckrodt, in letting Herr Ferge describe his infernal pleural shock, or in seeing poor Karen clap her hands with joy and gratitude, despite the bandaged fingertips, was not only of a vicarious and relative kind, but also genuine and immediate.†   (source)
  • She supposed that these were unpunctual guests, who would have to be content with vicarious civility, since Evie and Charles were gone, Henry tired, and the others in their rooms.†   (source)
  • At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain — — as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.†   (source)
  • Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.†   (source)
  • She knew that he was satisfied with Gopher Prairie, but it gave her vicarious hope to think of going, to ask for railroad folders at the station, to trace the maps with a restless forefinger.†   (source)
  • She was relieved when she had worked out a belief that she wasn't really shameful, that there was a mystical relation between herself and Carol, so that she was vicariously yet veritably with Kennicott, and had the right to be.†   (source)
  • The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously.†   (source)
  • My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.†   (source)
  • This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering.†   (source)
  • So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas.†   (source)
  • The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates,[130] the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man.†   (source)
  • This process of 'opening up' is a strange one to those who have read the professions of the men of that period and do not understand their practice; and perhaps shows us at its worst the great vice of the nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade the responsibility of vicarious ferocity.†   (source)
  • For the host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction.†   (source)
  • In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence of the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)