contrivances

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The film can’t afford to be shy about contrivances, but it’s only willing to cheat on facts, not feelings.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 27, 2025

“We Live in Time” is also chock-full of contrivances.

From Salon • Oct. 11, 2024

But based on a screenplay by a trio of Western writers and directed by Polish filmmaker Tomasz Bagiński, it quickly stumbles into narrative contrivances as it incessantly overworks certain emotional beats.

From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2023

Mischievously self-aware, it points to the contrivances that uphold modern romance, the games of scheming and flirting that we find so pleasurable and easy to play along with, despite their phony and potentially regressive underpinnings.

From New York Times • May 9, 2023

Adams had spent most of his retirement years denouncing such contrivances as gross distortions of history.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis