leitmotif
Example Sentences
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Scorsese’s faith, and his battles with it, provide something of a leitmotif of the series — is he a saint or a sinner?
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2025
The Argentine author, whose writing habitually draws on the uncanny, here delivers a blend of superstition, dread and a leitmotif of mental instability in a register of acute psychological realism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025
Through these depictions, the show tries to tell the histories of the nomadic, tribal and agrarian communities for whom resilient survival was the leitmotif and cloth a way of narrating their marginalised experiences.
From BBC ● Mar. 29, 2025
In the “Barbie” film, “What Was I Made For?” plays a key role — an instrumental version of the song pops up like a leitmotif, soundtracking introspective, existential moments for its protagonist.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 10, 2024
At its simplest, leitmotif is a straightforward association of a nugget of tune with a character.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Vocabulary lists containing leitmotif
Opera Vocabulary
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Words Derived from German
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