motif
Example Sentences
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That’s also why, when “Fjord” opens with soft piano chords playing “Amazing Grace,” it’s safe to assume the song will be an integral motif throughout the film.
From Salon β Sep. 19, 2026
Pumpkins are her most famous motif, featuring heavily in her paintings and giant sculptures.
From Barron's β Aug. 27, 2026
The Tractor Boys' new home kit takes inspiration from the Sir Bobby Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey stands at Portman Road, with a motif copying the one that runs across the roof of the stadium.
From BBC β Aug. 9, 2026
Ever since, skin bones have remained a recurring motif in evolution.
From Science Daily β May 21, 2026
A motif is a short musical idea — shorter than a phrase — that occurs often in a piece of music.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
"She formulated a philosophy of art she dubbed 'self-obliteration' based on simple motifs of obsessive repetition and proliferation," according to her website.
From Barron's β Aug. 27, 2026
Across these works, striking motifs recur—strange images and phrases.
From The Wall Street Journal β Aug. 18, 2026
A novelist explores narrative, making sense of themes, motifs and sensations to try to communicate about the complexity of a globe with some eight billion people in it.
From The Wall Street Journal β Aug. 13, 2026
More elaborate designs, including hatched bands, grids, and diamond-shaped motifs, also showed evidence of rotation, translation, repetition, and "embedding," i.e., the ability to build hierarchical levels of signs within the same surface.
From Science Daily β Aug. 9, 2026
Other motifs in the story are attached to concepts, for example ‘transformation’ or ‘love’ or ‘servitude’, or to things, such as a ‘spear’, the ‘gold’ or the ‘River Rhine’.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Vocabulary lists containing motif
Poetry: Literary Devices
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The AP English Exam: Rhetorical and Literary Terms 4
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Vocabulary to Describe Literary Devices
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