How to Use in thrall in a Sentence

in thrall

idiom
Definition of in thrallnext
  • His mind worked in peculiar ways, and his prose seemed always in thrall to stylistic principles that did not exist for anyone else.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2024
  • Faye and Anna were in thrall to the Kingman, a faceless monster of the woods in a black cloak and light-colored crown.
    — Jim Higgins, Journal Sentinel, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Mercury is closest to the sun and most in thrall to the star’s gravity.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The medium, in those days, was still mostly in thrall to mediocrity.
    — Bruce Handy, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2023
  • That night Jean was completely in thrall to her dreams, as if drugged on them.
    — Hannah Gold, Harper's Magazine, 11 Oct. 2022
  • This new cohort was no longer in thrall to the old regimes’ social structures.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers are in thrall and all talent must pay homage.
    — Elizabeth Barber, Harper's Magazine, 8 Feb. 2024
  • This is a party totally in thrall to Trump and his false claims about the 2020 election.
    — Chris Cillizza, CNN, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Federer and Nadal have held men’s tennis in thrall for close to two decades.
    — Jason Gay, WSJ, 24 Sep. 2022
  • Another was a lizard with a long tongue that licked off the faces of subway riders in thrall to their cellphones.
    — Hikari Hida, New York Times, 16 Apr. 2023
  • But what about Netanyahu, a man in thrall to the hard right and not exactly known for rhetorical restraint?
    — Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic, 21 Jan. 2024
  • And yet…Friedkin, for all his virtuosic kinesthetic vérité zap, was very much in thrall to the theater.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 6 Sep. 2023
  • In his absence, Brazil seemed bereft, adrift, unable to conceive of how to win the game without its leading man, the player to whom the team, as much as the country, was in thrall.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 27 Sep. 2022
  • Watching them all increasingly in thrall to their creation builds a thrill into the evening.
    — David Benedict, Variety, 6 Dec. 2022
  • American conservatism isn’t in thrall to the status quo.
    — Christopher Demuth, WSJ, 18 Nov. 2022
  • The Buffalo shooter was in thrall to the theory, as have been other racist and antisemitic killers.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 17 May 2022
  • Less in thrall to Freud but equally interested in the subconscious.
    — New York Times, 8 June 2023
  • The girls deserve a gritty origin-story version of the tale about a fawn heir to the forest throne, traumatized by the murder of his mother and in thrall to his childhood friend.
    — Vulture, 15 June 2023
  • Today, the Democratic Party is slightly less in thrall to the education myth.
    — Jennifer C. Berkshire, The New Republic, 16 May 2023
  • Even so, jilted lovers, onetime jailers and men who took the fall for him and served time in prison for his crimes remained in thrall to his charismatic personality.
    — Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2020
  • Or the way Tanya wept at Madama Butterfly, whose lead character sees her own tragic outcome sealed by a callous lover in thrall to his selfish desires?
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 12 Dec. 2022
  • Just this month, a Texas man in thrall to Nazi ideology fatally shot eight people at an outlet mall outside of Dallas.
    — Alan Feuer, New York Times, 26 May 2023
  • Even more depressing to Ms. Cheney’s admirers is that the party itself, at both the state and national level, is so in thrall to Mr. Trump that even a protest campaign may not prove fruitful.
    — Jonathan Martin, New York Times, 17 Aug. 2022
  • But the problem here is that both parties are increasingly in thrall to the small number of people who vote in primaries and lack incentives to act in the broader public’s interest.
    — Alan Murray, Fortune, 12 Jan. 2023
  • The 46-year-old Fujimaru is considered the consigliere of natural wine in Japan, a country in thrall to the category, if not to its own wine-making abilities.
    — Adam Erace, Travel + Leisure, 25 July 2023
  • For decades, Russian money, energy and military strength held Europe in thrall.
    — Washington Post, 4 Mar. 2022
  • In 1953, the queen’s coronation unfolded in a nation in thrall to a newfangled miracle called television.
    — Alan Cowell, New York Times, 2 May 2023
  • Granville is obscene, enraged, comedic, self-centered, and self-aware, in thrall to literature and seemingly even more tortured by the inability to read than by the inability to write.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2021
  • The family was in thrall to Jeff Mac’s parents—among the first white people to settle in Archer County—who seemed to expect subsequent generations to double down on their sacrifice.
    — Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
  • And beyond the need for better batteries, there are even harder problems still, such as the societal challenge of changing attitudes and behaviors that have held the world in thrall to fossil fuels for so long.
    — Lauren Leffer, Scientific American, 14 Aug. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'in thrall.' 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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