Sample Sentences for
provincial
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

provincial as in:  the provincial license

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  • He was one of Herat's best-connected men, friend of the mayor and the provincial governor.  (source)
    provincial = of the province (a region within a country much like a state is a region in the United States)
  • Before Josie had told the news Anne's highest pinnacle of aspiration had been a teacher's provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and perhaps the medal!  (source)
    provincial = related to a province (a license good throughout the province)
  • Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date.  (source)
    provincial = small-town
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provincial as in:  provincial attitude

She was eager to escape the provincial attitudes for her small town.
provincial = unsophisticated or narrow-minded
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • But young men didn't — at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't — drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.  (source)
    provincial = unsophisticated
  • It was as if we were a provincial audience,  (source)
  • But her talk was also not vulgar or harshly provincial-sounding as was the other girls'.  (source)
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
  • I shrank my own life. ... I settled for being pallid and provincial, out of my own eternal timidity.  (source)
    provincial = unsophisticated
  • Native San Franciscans, possessive of the city, had to cope with an influx, not of awed respectful tourists but of raucous unsophisticated provincials.  (source)
    provincials = people thought to be unsophisticated because they are not from a large city
  • Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense.†  (source)
  • Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.  (source)
    provincial = unsophisticated (narrow-minded and/or old-fashioned)
  • But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then?†  (source)
  • The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly descending, proved, as Isabel had promised, quite delicately, even though rather provincially, fair.†  (source)
  • Her parents seemed to fall back in love and even her totally provincial brother learned both Icelandic and French.  (source)
    provincial = unsophisticated
  • There were too many people, provincials with foolish faces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled the god's immortal repose.†  (source)
  • Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important—a banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk.†  (source)
  • She had ordered gowns of the utmost magnificence and sophistication—and in these, which would only make her look all the more stupid and provincial, she was going to Camelot to fight her battle with the English Queen.  (source)
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meaning too rare to warrant focus

Show 3 with this contextual meaning
  • I was going to have Colonial this and French Provincial that.†  (source)
  • August bought me a new bed and a dressing table, white French Provincial from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.†  (source)
  • And hanging above the French provincial dresser, invisible in the darkness, was a painting by Vincent van Gogh.†  (source)
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Show 5 more with 2 word variations
  • The deck was covered in thick crimson wool, and the furniture was pure civilian, French provincial, oak and brocade.†  (source)
  • with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes  (source)
    Provincial = rosette decorations likely inspired by roses from Provins, France
  • I stepped into a sitting room with French provincial furniture, the type with twisted claws, where I was received by a native matron who did a perfect imitation of a Parisian accent; she reeled off the price list, and asked me if I had anything special in mind.†  (source)
  • "They are interesting," I said, recalling the figure of a woman in a small French provincial town that was her world, and prison.†  (source)
  • Beyond is the vista he remembers so well: the residences laid out like a garden suburb with large houses in fake Georgian and fake Tudor and fake French provincial, the meandering streets leading to the employees' golf course and their restaurants and nightclubs and medical clinics and shopping malls and indoor tennis courts, and their hospitals.†  (source)
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