How to Use poetic license in a Sentence

poetic license

noun
Definition of poetic licensenext
  • But the war on cancer is not the place for pep talks and poetic license.
    — Steve Salerno, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2018
  • In the episode, Rufus refers to the play without saying its name, as a way to critique Miller’s poetic license.
    — Rachel Kaufman, Smithsonian, 9 Apr. 2018
  • This suggests that McLain might have taken poetic license with some of the details of Gellhorn’s life.
    — Wayne Catan, idahostatesman, 11 May 2018
  • The language of burning is poetic license, or should be: No one wants to eat rice that’s actually been burned.
    — New York Times, 28 Oct. 2021
  • Basically this is a Texas history book dressed up with poetic license in the form of a novel.
    — Andrew Dansby, ExpressNews.com, 31 May 2020
  • Of course, train robbery is such a familiar term that perhaps there is poetic license.
    — WSJ, 1 Feb. 2022
  • What seemed like poetic license used to make a point now seems steeped in elements of reality.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 24 Oct. 2020
  • However, the victim inevitably would have died from shock and blood loss very early on in the process, so the final fluttering of the lungs is likely poetic license.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 10 Jan. 2022
  • Of course, that's a bit of poetic license; Kirk is, after all, a fictional character.
    — Don Lincoln, CNN, 12 Oct. 2021
  • So the poetic license on the songs on this record was really, really limited.
    — Melinda Newman, Billboard, 15 Sep. 2022
  • The Hannity's defenders may call that sarcasm or poetic license, but words are words.
    — Fox News, 9 June 2018
  • Years ago, the very young were schooled with samplers, creating the elements of poetic license while developing a themed portrait of design.
    — Brenda Yenke, cleveland, 7 Nov. 2019
  • To put a life, or an act of creation, on-screen means speaking in movie language, always its own kind of poetic license to begin with; to put a life of music on the screen invites even more hyperbole and exaggeration.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 12 Aug. 2021
  • That caricature is probably not terribly far from the truth, even if the film's fictionalized version of events sometimes seems to rely too heavily on poetic license to drive home its point: the love of money is the root of all evil.
    — The Washington Post, NOLA.com, 20 Dec. 2017
  • The version of events painted on three walls of the 52-square-meter funerary chambers probably takes some poetic license with Capitolias' history.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 10 Oct. 2018
  • Where, then, does reality stop and poetic license begin in a film that includes many private conversations?
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Dec. 2022
  • What abides is a giddy awareness of history as a tale told by unreliable narrators, as well as the oddly comforting impression that senescence has its own poetic license.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Suddenly, what was originally just an ethereal touch of poetic license becomes an extended flight of surrealism.
    — Washington Post, 18 June 2021
  • The production, directed by Neel Keller, carefully splits the difference between documentary objectivity and poetic license.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 18 Jan. 2018

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