How to Use morality play in a Sentence

morality play

noun
Definition of morality playnext
Synonyms for morality playnext
  • To turn Floyd into a hero of a racialized morality play is inane.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 25 May 2021
  • Beneath all the terror and gore, Jaws is largely a morality play.
    — Neil Swidey, BostonGlobe.com, 9 July 2019
  • That leaves us with one morality play neverending and two guys with their noses pressed to the Cooperstown glass.
    — Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 26 Jan. 2022
  • And as a result, the morality play scheduled for Rowan County this fall has been canceled.
    — Andrew Wolfson, The Courier-Journal, 23 May 2018
  • His play declined due in part to injuries, and his downfall turned into a morality play.
    — Jay Jaffe, SI.com, 16 Oct. 2017
  • The second is a morality play in which blame can be laid, revenge can be had, and justice or its opposite might be served.
    — Christian Lorentzen, Harper's Magazine, 17 Aug. 2021
  • As his senior season winds down, Heimlich has been cast as the central figure in a morality play.
    — Nancy Armour, USA TODAY, 23 May 2018
  • But trans kids have become pawns in this country’s toxic morality play.
    — Nancy Armour, USA TODAY, 5 Mar. 2021
  • On the other hand, supporters of the European Union and of the transatlantic relationship are not in need of any more morality plays.
    — Michael Kimmage, New Republic, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Jayson's encounter with the school's disciplinary measures seems more like a morality play than anything that has to do with him or Owen as characters.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 16 Oct. 2020
  • Of course, for many viewers, there’s nothing inherently insidious about the film, which doesn’t have the tone of a morality play.
    — Audrey Farley, The Atlantic, 15 July 2019
  • The Clippers’ players had been caught up in a firestorm and were navigating both a playoff series as well as a public morality play.
    — Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 May 2018
  • Hence, this morality play ringed by accordion, a novelty in ranchera music but one used here to evoke the U.S.-Mexico border, where norteño music reigns.
    — Los Angeles Times, 12 Dec. 2021
  • The tone and substance toggle abruptly among satire, melodrama and morality play.
    — Mike Hale, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2018
  • The prospect of child care re-opening turns a basic, beneficial need into a morality play with too many monologues and hand-wringing.
    — Pete Croatto, Good Housekeeping, 4 June 2020
  • All of this shows how the banking crisis has become in part a morality play with crypto—a shady and invasive foreign species to the world of New York finance—a central villain.
    — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune Crypto, 16 Mar. 2023
  • Kendi’s stark provocation that one is either a racist or an anti-racist epitomized the morality play that the right has come to describe as the essence of woke politics.
    — Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2023
  • In the final five episodes, Servant descends into farce, a kind of opposite-day Mary Poppins morality play.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 28 Nov. 2019
  • As the finale of the series approaches, the whodunit mystery of (spoiler!) who killed Ghost has been the main focus, and there’s tension as to whether the death of the cherished main character is a tragedy or a morality play.
    — Christopher Harris, Washington Post, 31 Jan. 2020
  • If there’s no real nuance in these depictions, that’s because this is a morality play, almost a fable.
    — Rumaan Alam, The New Republic, 15 Jan. 2020
  • The singsong verse of the morality plays is countered by ribald cross talk delivered with naturalistic verve.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2018
  • Viewers should go in cold to Barbarian, one of the creepier charmers of the year, but rest assured that Long’s seemingly effortless petulance punches up the morality play at the center of the film.
    — Robyn Bahr, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Dec. 2022
  • What surrounds them is largely trite and artificial, a morality play with little depth in the creation of its characters.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2019
  • People who actually care about health care policy, and not about wedging the poor and frail into a character in some sort of cheap morality play, are predictably aghast.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 11 Jan. 2018
  • One thing is clear: Everyone in this 21st-century morality play has blood on his hands, capitalists and jihadists alike.
    — Andrea Simakis, cleveland.com, 28 Feb. 2018
  • This arguably means Link as a character has more in common with older morality plays than more modern characters.
    — WIRED, 9 Nov. 2023
  • For years, each big fight was a parable; an allegory; a morality play staged, quite literally, on canvas.
    — Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 18 Nov. 2021
  • Football, after all, is a game, not an inspirational morality play.
    — CBS News, 12 Feb. 2023
  • These works are morality plays about courage and determination.
    — Alan Furst, New York Times, 2 Feb. 2018
  • The trial of Jack Phillips, like a modern-day morality play, illustrates how pernicious — and far advanced — this subversion has become.
    — Ryan Bangert, National Review, 23 June 2021

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