How to Use dutiful in a Sentence

dutiful

adjective
Definition of dutifulnext
Synonyms for dutifulnext
  • She’s the dutiful wife at home, but seething with anger the moment Kevin leaves the room.
    — Morgan Baila, refinery29.com, 23 June 2021
  • William, 40, is the heir, a dutiful second to their father, the new king.
    — William Booth, Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2022
  • When a runner came by, Hal and I would get back to being dutiful.
    — Devin Kelly, Longreads, 19 Jan. 2022
  • Lake has served as a dutiful mouthpiece for Trump's false claims of election fraud.
    — Brigid Kennedy, The Week, 8 Aug. 2022
  • The rest of it, the dutiful search, too often disappoints.
    — Clare Sestanovich, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
  • Through that last scene in the zoo in Pondicherry, where the goat gets brought on and shoved in the tiger cage, the puppeteer’s doing a dutiful job of keeping the body and the head attached.
    — Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Now the store was empty, the dutiful manager at his post, behind the counter.
    — New York Times, 25 Jan. 2022
  • After all, Daphne was fairly bland at the beginning of her courtship with the Duke, all doe eyes and dutiful smiles.
    — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 24 Mar. 2022
  • So many dutiful Bills fans showed up on Friday that lines snaked around the stadium for hours.
    — Jalen Wright, New York Times, 20 Jan. 2024
  • Warda has made in becoming the dutiful wife of a man in prison are nothing in Amira’s eyes.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 28 Oct. 2021
  • Greene was in the birthing room when Oliver was born and spent the early years changing diapers and being a dutiful dad.
    — Linda Marx, PEOPLE.com, 23 July 2021
  • The story itself has no sense of stakes or resonance, and the actors vary in affect from lifeless to dutiful to pained.
    — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2022
  • May's secret activism since the coup — and her break from the role she is meant to play as a dutiful military spouse — has left her straddling two worlds in conflict.
    — Washington Post, 28 Feb. 2021
  • It was supposed to be an emotional trip shared between a father and a dutiful son.
    — Daniel Wu, Washington Post, 9 Aug. 2023
  • Then some dutiful engineer rolls out the blueprints and explains the bad news — the oceanliner’s wound is a mortal one.
    — Kyle Whitmire, al, 22 Mar. 2023
  • There’s a dutiful stellium of planets marching through Capricorn this month, which falls in your 6th house of work.
    — Steph Koyfman, Condé Nast Traveler, 27 Dec. 2023
  • Jane’s new talents don’t do much for the story and read as a dutiful nod to women’s empowerment (thanks).
    — New York Times, 7 July 2022
  • Despite her husband's noticeable flaws, Mary is a dutiful wife and takes pains to hide her bruises.
    — Diana Gabaldon, Star Tribune, 17 May 2021
  • Despite her husband’s noticeable flaws, Mary is a dutiful wife and takes pains to hide her bruises.
    — Washington Post, 30 Apr. 2021
  • Who wants to be the dutiful, self-sacrificing first wife, anyway?
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 21 July 2022
  • Ever the dutiful Marine, with respect for the chain of command, Ureña asked no questions.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 21 May 2021
  • Over many decades, Prince Philip ran the gamut in the British media: at times scolded, mocked and lauded for everything from cringe-worthy comments to his dutiful service to the crown. .
    — Washington Post, 10 Apr. 2021
  • In her segment, Ms. Chaieb is portrayed in black and white as a dutiful daughter, drinking tea in her mother’s apartment.
    — Dan Bilefsky, New York Times, 21 Dec. 2020
  • So who is Kate Middleton and Prince William’s dutiful nanny?
    — Stephanie Petit, Peoplemag, 10 July 2023
  • There are moments in Sidney that shake off the dutiful air of canonization to reach for a more complex portrait of Poitier.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 Sep. 2022
  • If anything, The Crown has become like the Queen in her final decades: pristine-looking, dutiful to a fault, and searching for a kind of significance that’s long been out of reach.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Helen wants to use this trip to become a different person, to step into roles other than the dutiful ones she’s been assigned in her life.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 25 July 2023
  • But on Saturday, amid the bugles and the bagpiper and the cannon fire, the rituals also made a small space for a complicated man and his dutiful wife.
    — Washington Post, 17 Apr. 2021
  • Toni Collette is Marina, the dutiful, focused captain of a ship headed to Mars.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 22 Apr. 2021
  • When the insect flies away, the dutiful teenager follows it to another flower.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Dec. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dutiful.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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