We were taught to avoid certain locutions when speaking. in the poet's somewhat affected locution, word order is often reversed and so we have “the sea serene”

Recent Examples on the Web

With its mess of divergent voices, picture-poems, and eccentric locutions, the result is baffling, beautiful, and always fascinatingly Notley. David Wallace, The New Yorker, "Alice Notley and the Art of Not Giving a Damn," 1 Apr. 2020

President Lyndon Baines Johnson was a retro Texan by birth and locution. Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, "Review: Broadway’s ‘Great Society’ about LBJ has lots of history but no real bite," 2 Oct. 2019

Consider common appeals to allyship and altruism; such locutions convey a sort of optional quality, a moralistic tone, and unreliable trendiness. Astra Taylor, The New Republic, "One for All," 26 Aug. 2019

On this night, Dylan made every word count, and sang with a blues master’s locution. Greg Kot, chicagotribune.com, "Review: Bob Dylan in fine voice at UIC? Yes, you read that right," 31 Oct. 2019

American English is meant to grow wild and woolly on our shores, spawning dialects and pidgins, wantonly consuming foreign words and locutions, anarchically legitimizing slang and warped grammar. Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, "The Delicate Art of Creating New Emoji," 28 June 2018

This is an engrossing story, which Wood tells with a mastery of detail and a modern plainness of expression that makes a refreshing contrast with the 18th-century locutions of his subjects. Richard Brookhiser, New York Times, "In ‘Friends Divided,’ John Adams and Thomas Jefferson Beg to Differ," 31 Oct. 2017

Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. Mark Lilla, WSJ, "The Liberal Crackup," 11 Aug. 2017

The result has been an ever more naked public square, another memorable Neuhaus locution, where religion is viewed as a merely private affair with no public relevance. Ryan T. Anderson, National Review, "The Continuing Threat to Religious Liberty," 3 Aug. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'locution.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.