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
  • William has to spend the rest of his life being cautious, dutiful, and dull.
    — Sarah Lyall, Town & Country, 8 Jan. 2013
  • When a runner came by, Hal and I would get back to being dutiful.
    — Devin Kelly, Longreads, 19 Jan. 2022
  • But this, frankly, gets short shrift, and feels more dutiful than inspired.
    — David Treuer, The New York Review of Books, 17 Nov. 2020
  • Being seen as such—and pious and dutiful to boot—was what gave them the license to speak in public and to write.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
  • When the work feels dutiful, there’s less incentive to suit up.
    — Sean Gregory, Time, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Doesn't all the post-Awards show commentary just feel sort of dutiful compared to the tizzy over the First Lady's bangs?
    — Sarah Smith, Redbook, 22 Jan. 2013
  • Michael is the dutiful son who works day and night to provide for his family.
    — Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2024
  • 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
  • Lawrence is his dutiful wife who spends her time rehabbing the old house.
    — Michael Heaton, cleveland.com, 15 Sep. 2017
  • 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
  • Playing the doting, dutiful partner to the wrong person in hopes of changing them is a canon event.
    — Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 20 Feb. 2024
  • 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
  • Kate, seeing the Queen, gave her mother-in-law a dutiful curtsy.
    — Chloe Foussianes, Town & Country, 26 Dec. 2019
  • This won’t come as a surprise to fans of Game of Thrones, the show that features the 38-year-old actor as the dutiful and fearless warrior Brienne of Tarth.
    — Tufayel Ahmed, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 July 2017
  • For starters there’s Troy’s wife, Rose (Greta Oglesby), the dutiful spouse who loves her man despite his faults.
    — Robert W. Butler, kansascity, 21 Oct. 2017
  • These are some of the few scenes in which the director loosens up and sheds the dutiful posture that can come from adapting a canonical text.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Aug. 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
  • His stiff, dutiful portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, the grand master of the order, hangs in the Louvre.
    — Teju Cole, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2020
  • The remark flung a hundred and one stereotypes about meek, dutiful, robotic Asian men out the window.
    — Inkoo Kang, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Feb. 2020
  • 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
  • Even after all these years on the same show, there’s nothing about their energy that feels dutiful.
    — James Hibberd, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Aug. 2024
  • While most comments were about pet cats, some of the felines killed were part of colonies being looked after by dutiful locals.
    — Christopher Harress | [email protected], al, 23 Oct. 2019
  • For years, the public works director was the city’s cleanup man and dutiful caretaker.
    — Jason W. Lloren, SFChronicle.com, 3 Feb. 2020
  • 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
  • Dozens of solemn, dutiful citizens milled around, waiting to hear our fates.
    — Susana Morris, Longreads, 8 Sep. 2017

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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