How to Use vicarious in a Sentence
vicarious
adjective-
In a series of posts, the pair gave us a vicarious tour through the iconic city.
—Emily Wang, Glamour, 23 July 2018
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There's a bit of vicarious living going on there in the songs.
—Tatiana Tenreyro, Billboard, 6 Sep. 2017
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For Austin and perhaps others, the thrill will soon not be vicarious.
—Billy Witz, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2016
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The process goes smoothly enough, but this vicarious thrill reels out of control in a hurry.
—Dennis Harvey, Variety, 20 Oct. 2021
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Here are nine movies about the vicarious thrill of victory and the secondhand agony of defeat.
—BostonGlobe.com, 26 Jan. 2023
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Such vicarious voyages through the past and present of classical music from the comfort of your couch may be no match for the real thing.
—Washington Post, 10 Sep. 2020
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Of course, that doesn't give investors the vicarious buzz of sharing in their favorite artists' success.
—Megan Cerullo, CBS News, 8 Mar. 2024
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One of the perks of the job, Goucher told me, was getting a vicarious thrill of being close to the action of elite-level competition.
—Martin Fritz Huber, Outside Online, 3 Nov. 2021
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Call it cyber-vicarious — scary fast and almost as good as being there.
—Bill Monroe, oregonlive, 11 Mar. 2022
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Getting lost in a romance novel gave her the vicarious thrill of falling in love without having to talk to or touch anyone.
—Lisa Bonos, Dallas News, 23 July 2019
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Forty-seven years after that vicarious connection, Dobbins met Tyler face to face for the first time last month.
—Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2023
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There’s a lot of vicarious pleasure to be had in this charming book, and none of the drawbacks of a real day at the beach: The characters apply no sunscreen yet go unburned!
—Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 27 May 2022
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That Jagger can still sing and dance up a storm, at 80, is a triumph for him and should provide a vicarious thrill for anyone who attends a concert by the Rolling Stones next year.
—George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Dec. 2023
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Viewers can’t look away, cringe from vicarious fear, or some combination of both — and are amazed that Thompson isn’t fazed at all.
—Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2021
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So, there is pleasure to be had from these vicarious visits to Dodge, but are there any other benefits?
—Mathias Clasen, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Oct. 2022
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These gift boxes from Culinary Backstreets are designed to create a vicarious trip to a city like Naples or Athens at a time when travel is on hold.
—Florence Fabricant, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2020
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Even for teens who aren’t already living with mental health strains, vicarious trauma can take a toll.
—Claire Lampen, Teen Vogue, 24 May 2018
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For some, part of 50 Cent fandom was their vicarious thrill of following his drama.
—Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 9 Feb. 2023
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And Trump is the champion and defender of the latter — the man who, with his words of anger and grievance, permits them the possibility of vicarious vengeance.
—Damon Linker, TheWeek, 4 Dec. 2020
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To watch videos like the Williams brothers’ is to experience a vicarious thrill of discovery, to scrub your mind’s ears clean and rehear a familiar song as if for the first time.
—Jody Rosen, New York Times, 27 Aug. 2020
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Third, the right to bring a defamation case should be limited to the person who claims injury; suits should not be available to anyone who takes vicarious offence.
—The Economist, 13 July 2017
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Research shows that the effect of vicarious grief is strongest when a person identifies with the victims.
—New York Times, 10 Mar. 2022
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Setting her apart from others in the group was an idiosyncratic rather than a vicarious motive for rising to the bait of a bedazzling newness.
—Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2022
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There is a vicarious thrill in watching the unfurling of, say, Oregon or Oral Roberts, that stamps the prior day’s achievement as official.
—New York Times, 25 Mar. 2021
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The Game both understand this in their own way, modeling the vicarious pity and guilty delight that comes from watching events unfold in slasher films.
—Wired, 10 July 2022
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What is most compelling is the vicarious sense of judgments made on the fly, according to the standard that shapes any art scene not distorted by marketing: the esteem of peers.
—Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2017
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The temptation for a vicarious do-over is immense, and so are the stage-mom rationalizations.
—Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker, 18 Jan. 2016
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The vicarious thrill of veering into the unreasonable, of making a scene.
—Meaghan O'Connell, Longreads, 20 July 2017
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This wild, vicarious ride through youthful adventure is absolutely worth taking, for your own nostalgia and for the reminder that the kids are indeed alright.
—Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2024
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While some revenge flicks may offer lackluster endings, others provide that addicting, vicarious thrill.
—EW.com, 31 May 2024
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vicarious.' 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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