How to Use ontological in a Sentence

ontological

adjective
Definition of ontologicalnext
  • And while that might sound a tad ontological for fans of pulp fictions with high body counts, rest assured that the God invoked here is definitely one of vengeance.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2018
  • The specter of death is nearly always present, framed by ontological discussions wrought in dizzying spirals of words.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2018
  • The show is still beloved, a comforting haven of ontological order and self-confidence.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 11 Oct. 2022
  • Each, apparently, is the real Santa, which adds to the mind-bending ontological aspects of the whole business.
    — New York Times, 23 Dec. 2020
  • Those of us who have been trying to make sense of the Trump era are consistently forced to ask ourselves unanswerable ontological questions: What is a surprise?
    — Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, 31 Jan. 2017
  • Plus: The infamous 2016 Macbook Pro, Gödel’s ontological proof, and a mascot’s moment of weakness.
    — Steven Levy, Wired, 22 Oct. 2021
  • Alongside the moral issues, there is an ontological muddle.
    — Jody Rosen, Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2021
  • Earlier this week, Allen argued that Trump’s inability to tell the truth represented a kind of ontological problem that the media was ill-equipped to handle.
    — Alex Shephard, New Republic, 19 Oct. 2017
  • As for Pale Male, who sired several more broods with several more mates, his current ontological status is unclear.
    — Andy Newman, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2017
  • That initial ontological confusion was shared by most of his colleagues.
    — George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 15 Dec. 2013
  • Bonnie Huie’s translation is nothing short of remarkable — loving, even; one gets the sense that great pains have been taken to preserve the voice behind this lush, ontological masterwork.
    — Leopoldine Core, New York Times, 5 May 2017
  • By proving otherwise, the researchers raise intriguing questions about the ontological roots of language, and suggest that some shared features of our brains had a hand in shaping the development of language.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 14 Sep. 2016
  • Likewise, my prompt to offer both an ontological and an epistemological answer to the question When does bread become toast?
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 7 Dec. 2022
  • But notwithstanding these painful periods of mutual adjustment, the process has so far worked and may prove a model for the ontological union of humanity.
    — Steve Fuller, Discover Magazine, 2 Feb. 2015
  • The underlying problem with the FCC’s approach may not be economic, but ontological.
    — Popular Mechanics, 17 June 2019
  • What's important to realize is that the ontological proof is perfectly logical -- that is, the conclusions follow inevitably from the premises.
    — Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 10 Mar. 2011
  • By these standards, the ontological commitments of the multiverse or the many-worlds interpretation are actually quite thin.
    — Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 4 June 2012
  • His permanent search for a better version of himself is clearly influenced by Buddism and ontological coaching.
    — Billboard Argentina, Billboard, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Bryan argued that Darwin’s painting of humans as the descendants of apes was a demotion in ontological priority that provided tacit permission for the deaths of millions.
    — Longreads, 24 Jan. 2023
  • His ontological proof is an interesting intellectual venture and certainly has kept logicians busy since it was published 50 years ago, just before his death.
    — Steven Levy, Wired, 22 Oct. 2021
  • Its unstated premise is that events, even natural phenomena such as hurricanes, somehow conform at a basic ontological level to what happen to be the talking points of the older of our two major political parties.
    — Matthew Walther, TheWeek, 30 Oct. 2020
  • What follows is part exorcism, part dialogue with her dearly departed; part slide show and part ontological theorizing.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2017
  • My scientific approach differs substantially in its guiding ontological commitments than those that guide current research on the nature of fear.
    — Dean Mobbs, Scientific American, 20 Sep. 2019
  • Cinema is another side to his ontological vision of fashion.
    — Fabiana Giacomotti, Vogue, 16 Jan. 2022
  • While breathtakingly sophisticated in their content, their tone recalls the best and most beloved children's books: playful but gentle, earnest without being naive, reverberant with ontological wonder.
    — Amy Brady, Scientific American, 9 Sep. 2021
  • Knowledge graphs built upon ontological concepts developed as part of the Semantic Web but allowed for a more expressive hierarchical system, with a greater emphasis on scale and relationships.
    — Bryon Jacob, Forbes, 28 Oct. 2021
  • The affective experience of being lost quickly inflates from a local problem of orientation to a general feeling of ontological failure.
    — Lauren Elkin, The Atlantic, 16 Feb. 2018
  • Can philosophy by itself resolve such an ontological quandary?
    — Peter Byrne, Quanta Magazine, 24 May 2013
  • This represents an almost ontological difference between the two parties.
    — Ryu Spaeth, New Republic, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Even in the academy, fellow polymaths were bedazzled by the breadth of his boundless ruminations into metaphysics, modal logic, recursion theory, identity materialism and the ontological nature of numbers.
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 21 Sep. 2022

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