- plural of motif.
motifs
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.
Webb eschews the Wagnerian method of film scoring—dark motifs for the evil characters, bright tunes for the good ones—in favor of fluid, shifting psychological music, a forerunner of Hitchcock’s scores with Bernard Herrmann.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
The "polka dot queen" channelled hallucinations and battles with mental health into vibrant art featuring her trademark dots, nets and infinity motifs over a career spanning decades and continents.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 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 ● 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 ● Aug. 9, 2026
Just as the period’s architects designed buildings from the same limited collection of motifs and shapes, Haydn and his contemporaries were designing music from a similarly limited catalogue.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
