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sardonic
in a sentence

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  • She had one hand on her hip and a sardonic smile on her face.†   (source)
  • He directed a most unbabylike, sardonic look at Barb Wiggin, who only then regained her control; she moved the "pillar of light" back to the Descending Angel, where it belonged.†   (source)
  • The gap made him look sardonic.†   (source)
  • The question and the use of her name was sardonic.†   (source)
  • "Am I?" the dwarf replied, sardonic.†   (source)
  • Annoyance flashed across Artemis's features, only to be replaced by his customary sardonic grin.†   (source)
  • That and the quick, almost sardonic smile I would catch him hiding from Siri when she reprimanded him.†   (source)
  • He was tall, slim for a SEAL, and, I thought, a bit sardonic.†   (source)
  • The title of the piece was Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind, and had been noted, immediately upon its introduction, for its earnestness, anomalous to the artist's typical work, which had a darkly sardonic tone, usually at the expense of rising China and its attendant sense of self-worth.†   (source)
  • "An inch is ten miles on this map," Miss Riley said sardonically.†   (source)
  • Rife delivers this line with an incredibly sardonic and contemptuous twang, the exaggerated accent of a cowboy who suspects that some Yankee pencilneck is looking down his nose at him.†   (source)
  • Oh no? the voice of the cynic whispered sardonically.†   (source)
  • I could see it in her eyes, a sardonic connection.†   (source)
  • And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic.†   (source)
  • Farmer remembered coming home from college once and the Warden opening the tailgate of his derelict pickup truck to reveal a chaos of worthless old lumber, a couple of wasps flying out, and the Warden saying, with his sardonic smile, "Someday, son, this will all be yours."†   (source)
  • With a wry grin, and the sketch of a sardonic bow.†   (source)
  • With an expression of sardonic admiration, Gamble touched his brow and bowed to Nasuada before backing out of the stone room with his sullen opponent.†   (source)
  • His grumpy silence of other days, his sardonic humour, gave place to hypochondriac complainings and outbursts of fierce temper.†   (source)
  • Government agents sardonically known as the Menstrual Police regularly rounded up women in their workplaces to administer pregnancy tests.†   (source)
  • He raised one eyebrow sardonically.†   (source)
  • She raised a sardonic eyebrow.†   (source)
  • I took it as another sardonic zinger aimed at Raleigh and me.†   (source)
  • Dr. Stubbs laughed with sardonic amusement at the prospect.†   (source)
  • Jen Shinnan laughed, sardonic.†   (source)
  • But the lift of the brows lent a certain sardonic expression and the large, brown eyes looked sad and weary.†   (source)
  • It lasted but a moment, though it seemed to Annie an eternity, and Tom must have seen the desperation in her eyes, because he gave Frank a sardonic nod and said, "Well, there you go little brother, your chance for immortality."†   (source)
  • He was a muscular man with large features, but his face had the astonishing property of finely drawn lines that raised the corners of his mouth into the permanent hint of a wise, sardonic grin.†   (source)
  • Max exclaimed, remembering the dry, sardonic expression on the man's face.†   (source)
  • Carol's grin is sardonic.†   (source)
  • The Tennessean leaned back in his chair, the trace of a sardonic smile creasing his lips.†   (source)
  • Reinhold wondered, a little sardonically, if the carrier expected to find Russian submarines so close to shore.†   (source)
  • The shortish man with the wry ruddy sardonic face could only be John Cheever.†   (source)
  • President Hoover's campaign slogan—"Prosperity is just around the corner"—had become a sardonic national joke.†   (source)
  • He forced a sardonic grin.†   (source)
  • God, so it seemed to him, dwelled in the woods, while the fields echoed with the sardonic laughter of the devil.†   (source)
  • He began to realize, with a kind of sardonic amusement, that he was being superstitious as well as merely courteous.†   (source)
  • He grinned sardonically.†   (source)
  • He quotes from Dowson sardonically.†   (source)
  • CROMWELL (Sardonically) You don't understand me.†   (source)
  • The author of Gulliver's Travels sardonically proposed that Irish babies be fattened for English tables; other students urged less drastic ways of curbing population — none of which made the slightest difference.†   (source)
  • He looked at her for a long time as she sat there, sobbing; and then said sardonically, "O.K. boss."†   (source)
  • She never targets friends with her sardonic humor.
  • masking pity behind a sardonic tone   (source)
  • ' "Present company'?" repeated Snape sardonically.†   (source)
  • The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself.†   (source)
  • He was large, sardonic, dark-staring, with scarred brows and a furious beard fringed in gray.†   (source)
  • "Thank you," Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • "Mistuh Norton, he dead," the man in black intoned sardonically.†   (source)
  • Rhaegar Frey sported a silky beard and a sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • 'Cane has come up in the world,' said the Parisian sardonically.†   (source)
  • It was an oily, sardonic odor, as bitter. to his nose as the aroma of devil-grass.†   (source)
  • There was the same sardonic, genderless beauty stamped upon his luminous white face.†   (source)
  • "We haven't been told much," he observed, mildly sardonic.†   (source)
  • Anaander Mianaai's tone was dry, and sardonic.†   (source)
  • 'Here,' she taunted him sardonically, biting on her lip to still a delicate tremor.†   (source)
  • She made her eyes very big: the curve of her lips was somewhat sardonic.†   (source)
  • In any event, Lieutenant Skaaiat's sardonic practicality wasn't foreign to her house.†   (source)
  • The world filled with the sound of sardonic laughter, he was falling, dying, sleeping.†   (source)
  • Yossarian snickered sardonically when he understood.†   (source)
  • The Mianaai on the right let out a sardonic ha.†   (source)
  • Ida looked at her, speculatively, a small, sardonic smile touching her lips.†   (source)
  • He was smiling with his mouth, but the lines of his face held a deeper, more sardonic humor.†   (source)
  • He leaned forward, grinning at Jane in a way at once lewd and sardonic.†   (source)
  • For a moment Cass looked as though she were sardonically echoing his question.†   (source)
  • "You know more than I do," Rufus said, sardonically.†   (source)
  • I made some sardonic comment about the name of the diner and we walked out into the streets.†   (source)
  • His gang joins in, finishing a sardonic jazz lick offstage.†   (source)
  • JAMIE Breaks the cracking silence-bitterly, self-defensively sardonic.†   (source)
  • Samuel's jeweled, sardonic eyes dwelt on Tom's face until Tom said, "What's the matter, Father?"†   (source)
  • Before Jan could speak, his lips twisted into a sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • I'll leave the wise to wrangle," he quoted sardonically.†   (source)
  • She heard him cackle with high sardonic glee.†   (source)
  • If you'd get down on your knees— EDMUND As if he hadn't heard-sardonically.†   (source)
  • Her wide-set eyes slitted and grew watchful and sardonic.†   (source)
  • The corners of his mouth were turned slightly up in a sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • He saw Charles' face grinning sardonically--Charles--the mean, fierce eyes, the hot temper.†   (source)
  • I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face.†   (source)
  • 'Dear, dear,' said Professor McGonagall sardonically, as one of the dragons soared around her classroom, emitting loud bangs and exhaling flame.†   (source)
  • Snape raised his eyebrows and his tone was sardonic as he asked, "Are you intending to let him kill you?"†   (source)
  • Ah, I was forgetting …. you don't like the dementors, do you, Albus?" said Moody with a sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • Upon reading this, you may be tempted to ask a little sardonically whether Count Rostov—this self-proclaimed man of propriety—allowed himself to overhear any of the private exchanges around the table?†   (source)
  • I cannot help but compare this balding puppy of a man to A! bn-A! bn of the dark curls and silences and sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • Babette worried less about his condition than about the fact that he took such sardonic pleasure in his own hackings and spasms, as if there were something fatefully attractive in this terrible noise.†   (source)
  • Her smile was sardonic.†   (source)
  • David offered a sardonic grin and a farewell wave that Max returned before setting the ship on its course.†   (source)
  • She was a no-nonsense professional with a sardonic wit that conveyed her dislike of cant, which she saw through swiftly, and self-serving excuses — which she would not tolerate.†   (source)
  • And thus he was forced to watch in a state of silent anguish while the imp's urbane sardonic voice whispered in his ear.†   (source)
  • The girls disrobed at once, pausing in different stages to point proudly to their garish underthings and bantering all the while with the gaunt and dissipated old man with the shabby long white hair and slovenly white unbuttoned shirt who sat cackling lasciviously in a musty blue armchair almost in the exact center of the room and bade Nately and his companions welcome with a mirthful and sardonic formality.†   (source)
  • It seemed he could see the crystal light still, in the sardonic hall of his memory; hear the shout of accolade, empty in a husked land that stood even then hopeless against a gray ocean of time.†   (source)
  • I waited for the next question, or the sardonic I don't feel sorry for you, but she just sat silent, looking at me.†   (source)
  • He did not use the flint and steel until the remains of the day were only the fugitive heat in the ground beneath him and a sardonic orange line on the monochrome western horizon.†   (source)
  • Seivarden raised an eyebrow, sardonic.†   (source)
  • The gunslinger asked sardonically.†   (source)
  • Strigan made a sardonic noise.†   (source)
  • "I just love to see people happy," said Harold, and suddenly grinned; he, too, seemed very different from what he had been in the bar, younger and softer; and somewhere beneath it all, much sadder, so that Vivaldo regretted all his harsh, sardonic judgments.†   (source)
  • He wondered sardonically if it might not be the soul of Sylvia Pittston, the giant woman whose religious huckstering had led to the final showdown in Tull… but knew it was not.†   (source)
  • Ida watched with a bright, sardonic knowingness, as though the men on the stand were beating out a message she had commanded them to convey; but Vivaldo's head was slightly lowered and he looked up at the bandstand with a wry, uncertain bravado; as though there were an incipient war going on between himself and the musicians, having to do with rank and color and authority.†   (source)
  • The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room.†   (source)
  • When I met him I was enamored of Ernest Hemingway, like almost everyone else in his course, and ground out story after story about sardonic fellows sitting in bars before trudging off to brutal ends.†   (source)
  • [It is a sardonic laugh.†   (source)
  • She saw in his face surprise at her posture of fear, and she watched grow there that look she had so often seen lately, half sardonic, speculative, brutal, as if he were judging her.†   (source)
  • He had me cold—I must have known it as soon as I heard myself utter the word "ticks"—and the grin that had appeared briefly on his face, a sardonic flash of teeth and a twinkle that recognized the shambles of my defeat, dissolved even as he now firmly lowered his glass.†   (source)
  • The first interruption of the Jets' sunny mood is the sharply punctuated entrance of the leader of the Sharks, Bernardo: handsome proud, fluid, a chip on his sardonic shoulder.†   (source)
  • Mary, with the memory of her own mother recurring more and more frequently, like an older, sardonic double of herself walking beside her, followed the course her upbringing made inevitable.†   (source)
  • The style, however, as now can be seen, continues to possess an unruffled, wryly sardonic, self-anatomizing quality which Gide might have admired had he ever been able to peruse these humiliated pages: I might be tipped off to what is going on when we get into the taxi after Gage & Tollner's.†   (source)
  • He recites sardonically from Rossetti.†   (source)
  • He left at last with Charlie Slatter, who was sardonically disapproving; but unable to prevent himself from thinking that when he took over this place he would remove the wire from the chicken runs for his own, and that the corrugated iron of the house and buildings might come in useful some time.†   (source)
  • It seemed to be a perfectly amiable smile, with not a trace of the sardonic about it, but for an instant I felt intensely about his presence what I had already felt and what I would feel again—a fleeting moment in which the attractive and compelling in him seemed in absolute equipoise with the subtly and indefinably sinister.†   (source)
  • EDMUND Sardonically.†   (source)
  • EDMUND Sardonically.†   (source)
  • There was the sardonic look on his face his family knew so well--the joke on himself that made him laugh inwardly.†   (source)
  • He thought sardonically of telling him about his mother, to see how he would handle it, but he withdrew the thought quickly.†   (source)
  • I took some sardonic pleasure in that speculation.†   (source)
  • He looked down at us, mocking, faintly sardonic, a ghost of a smile on his lips.†   (source)
  • The young man looked up from the valves, looked sardonically at Tom.†   (source)
  • There was great variety in their faces, but in nearly all something supercilious and sardonic.†   (source)
  • A faithful, sardonic man, disillusioned, but not embittered.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(with a sardonic grin) What is it?†   (source)
  • And at his back, his father's voice, morose, sardonic, "Yes, hush him!†   (source)
  • His lips twisted again in an impressive sardonic smile.†   (source)
  • His face is musing, downlooking; again it cracks faintly, with a kind of sardonic weariness.†   (source)
  • The colonel's eyebrows went up again sardonically.†   (source)
  • And now he was back, insulting, sardonic, out of reach.†   (source)
  • He espied his betrothed and grinned, with dignity, sardonically, with big nuggets of gold teeth.†   (source)
  • Byron's face cracks with that grimace faint, fleeting, sardonic, weary, without mirth.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(in a sardonic whisper to Parritt) Isn't a pipe dream of yesterday a touching thing?†   (source)
  • He flung up a hand in mock horror and his black brows went up in the old sardonic crescents.†   (source)
  • Don't get no wrong idea—(But an interruption comes from Larry who bursts into a sardonic laugh.†   (source)
  • At this moment Larry pounds on the table with his fist and bursts into a sardonic laugh.†   (source)
  • (with a sardonic laugh) Well, be God, it fits, for Death was the Iceman Hickey called to his home!†   (source)
  • LARRY—(sardonically) Nothing I could help doing.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(sardonically) She didn't, don't worry.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(breaks in sardonically) Be God, you're there already, Jimmy.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(sardonically) It's a great game, the pursuit of happiness.†   (source)
  • He quotes a translation of the dosing couplet sardonically.†   (source)
  • Outside Toledo I took the wheel, and occasionally found him looking sardonically sidewise from his narrow face, a long dark eye making a new measure of me from its splotch of discoloration by fatigue or by the trouble of a busy will; and he said--they seemed his first words to me, though they weren't literally--"Step it up!"†   (source)
  • He named Clytie as he named them all, the one before Clytie and Henry and Judith even, with that same robust and sardonic temerity, naming with his own mouth his own ironic fecundity of dragon's teeth which with the two exceptions were girls.†   (source)
  • Coker, the Lung Shark, who had not ceased to regard McGuire's beanhunt with sardonic interest, now took the long cigar out of his devil's head and held it between his stained fingers as he tapped his companion.†   (source)
  • The Greek doctor gave a sardonic laugh.†   (source)
  • It was a noble face, a controlled one, just, it seemed, as he planned it to be; slightly weary, slightly sardonic, slightly voluptuous.†   (source)
  • The latter has a sardonic ring.†   (source)
  • His skin was pulled tight over the sharp bones of his face; his mouth was long and thin; his eyes, under slanting eyebrows, were pale blue and photographed like two sardonic white ovals.†   (source)
  • He gave her the box with a slightly sardonic smile and watched her while she put it on again and preened herself.†   (source)
  • Deliberate, again, sardonic.†   (source)
  • 'Yes,' he thinks with sardonic ruefulness, turning the mules into the open gate, 'I know exactly what she is going to say.†   (source)
  • You're offering the money at the wrong time, Mr. Birling. ale makes move as if concluding the session, possibly shutting up note-book, etc. Then surveys them sardonically.†   (source)
  • After a facial spasm that was like a sardonic smile, and a clicking of breath in his mouth, their Padre spoke like a horse for the last time: "Comete tu cola, Martínez, comete tu cola!"†   (source)
  • He seems to hover, shadowy, almost substanceless, a little behind and above all the other straightforward and logical even though (to him) incomprehensible ultimatums and affirmations and defiances and challenges and repudiations, with an air of sardonic and indolent detachment like that of a youthful Roman consul making the Grand Tour of his day among the barbarian hordes which his grandfather conquered, benighted in a brawling and childish and quite deadly mud-castle household in a…†   (source)
  • I had ill-judged him, he was neither hard nor sardonic, he was already my friend of many years, the brother I had never possessed.†   (source)
  • For it is a tradition that a man, when he has received a great shock, heads for a bar, puts his foot on the rail, orders five straight whiskies in a row, downs them one after another while he states with uncomprehending eyes at the white, tortured face in the mirror opposite him, and then engages the bartender in a sardonic conversation about Life.†   (source)
  • That would be Five Properties shambling through the cottage, Anna's immense brother, long armed and humped, his head grown off the thick band of muscle as original as a bole on his back, hair tender and greenish brown, eyes completely green, clear, estimating, primitive, and sardonic, an Eskimo smile of primitive simplicity opening on Eskimo teeth buried in high gums, kidding, gleeful, and unfrank; a big-footed contender for wealth.†   (source)
  • I find marks against all those sentences which seem to express a sardonic yet passionate nature; a moth-like impetuosity dashing itself against hard glass.†   (source)
  • I can imagine her engineering that courtship, supplying Judith and Bon with opportunities for trysts and pledges with a coy and unflagging ubiquity which they must have tried in vain to evade and escape, Judith with annoyed yet still serene concern, Bon with that sardonic and surprised distaste which seems to have been the ordinary manifestation of the impenetrable and shadowy character.†   (source)
  • Grandma looked sardonically at him.†   (source)
  • There was a sardonic grin on his face at the last words but it faded as Melanie turned up to him a face that blazed with gratitude.†   (source)
  • And later, in an expectant pause, he would deepen his arched brows portentously, stare up mockingly under his bushy eyebrows at his expectant audience, and say, in a deep sardonic voice: "And now, I am going to request Brother Gant to favor us with one of his polished and scholarly translations."†   (source)
  • …apparently for the very identical reason which four years ago he quitted home to champion; and this lover who apparently without volition or desire became involved in an engagement which he seems neither to have sought nor avoided, who took his dismissal in the same passive and sardonic spirit, yet four years later was apparently so bent upon the marriage to which up to that time he had been completely indifferent as to force the brother who had championed it to kill him to prevent it.†   (source)
  • She picked up from him the gift of stinging words and sardonic phrases and learned to relish using them for the power they gave her over other people.†   (source)
  • She was ten now and following the aunt's dereliction (Miss Rosa now kept her father's house as the aunt had done until the night the aunt climbed out the window and vanished) there was not only no one to make her to play with her nephew and niece on those days formal and funereal, she did not even have to go out there and breathe the same air which he breathed and where, even though absent, he still remained, lurked, in what she called sardonic and watchful triumph.†   (source)
  • She thought of Rhett, a flash of white teeth against swarthy skin, sardonic black eyes caressing her.†   (source)
  • …background or past or childhood—a man a little older than his actual years and enclosed and surrounded by a sort of Scythian glitter, who seems to have seduced the country brother and sister without any effort or particular desire to do so, who caused all the pother and uproar yet from the moment when he realised that Sutpen was going to prevent the marriage if he could, he (Bon) seems to have withdrawn into a mere spectator, passive, a little sardonic, and completely enigmatic.†   (source)
  • Scarlett had an uneasy feeling that this man who was not received was the only one present who knew what lay behind her wild gaiety and that it was affording him sardonic amusement.†   (source)
  • …like a shadow cast upon it which had resolved on the paper the instant before he looked at it and which might fade, vanish, at any instant while he still did: the dead tongue speaking after the four years and then after almost fifty more, gentle sardonic whimsical and incurably pessimistic, without date or salutation or signature: You will notice how I insult neither of us by claiming this to be a voice from the defeated even, let alone from the dead In fact, if I were a philosopher I…†   (source)
  • She missed him, missed his light flippant touch in anecdotes that made her shout with laughter, his sardonic grin that reduced troubles to their proper proportions, missed even his jeers that stung her to angry retort.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(who has been listening with sardonic appreciation—in his comically intense, crazy whisper) Be God, you've hit the nail on the head, Hickey!†   (source)
  • He begins to describe the sleepers with sardonic relish but at the same time showing his affection for them.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(as before, in a sardonic aside to Parritt) The tomorrow movement is a sad and beautiful thing, too!†   (source)
  • He cannot restrain a sardonic guffaw.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(with inner sardonic amusement—flatteringly) A shrewd business man, who doesn't miss any opportunity to get on in the world.†   (source)
  • (He pauses startledly, surprised at himself—then with a sardonic grin) Be God, I'm the only real convert to death Hickey made here.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(glances at him—for a moment he is stirred to sardonic pity) No, it doesn't look good, Rocky.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(grins with sardonic appreciation) Be God, Joe, you've got all the beauty of human nature and the practical wisdom of the world in that little parable.†   (source)
  • He has a gaunt Irish face with a big nose, high cheekbones, a lantern jaw with a week's stubble of beard, a mystic's meditative pale-blue eyes with a gleam of sharp sardonic humor in them.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(gives a sardonic guffaw—with his comically crazy, intense whisper) Be God, you can't say Hickey hasn't the miraculous touch to raise the dead, when he can start the Boer War raging again!†   (source)
  • (He adds sardonically) Or as bad.†   (source)
  • (He chuckles sardonically—then irritably as if suddenly provoked at himself for talking so much) Well, that's why I quit the Movement, if it leaves you any wiser.†   (source)
  • LARRY—(sardonically) Ha!†   (source)
  • He grins sardonically.†   (source)
  • [sardonically] Do not give way to remorse, Ann.†   (source)
  • "Oh, don't be afraid," persisted Mason, sardonically.†   (source)
  • He continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and defiance.†   (source)
  • He recalled Gottlieb's sardonic face; he felt and feared his quality of dynamic hatred.†   (source)
  • She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped from the brougham.†   (source)
  • Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted a sardonic whistle.†   (source)
  • The beer made him light-headed and the episode was momentarily illumined by a ray of sardonic humor.†   (source)
  • Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale.†   (source)
  • Here's your home," he said sardonically.†   (source)
  • Jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughed heavily.†   (source)
  • [Undershaft looks sardonically at Cusins].†   (source)
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