How To Use Ostensible In A Sentence

  • the ostensible truth of their theories
  • She is still slight in build, her child's presence not ostensible.
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • The ostensible reason was Mr Moussa's supposedly unauthorised dialogue with representatives of the main radical religious group, the Jamaat Islamiya.
  • The ostensible reason is that he does not wish to relinquish his seat in the European parliament.
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  • “Dans les écoles, les collèges et les lycées publics, le port de signes ou tenues par lesquels les élèves manifestent ostensiblement une appartenance religieuse est interdit.” The Volokh Conspiracy » Georgia Courts Expressly Allow Religious Headgear in Court:
  • The ostensible ease with which he makes such jumps unsettles even loyal supporters.
  • L’article 222 du Code pénal marocain stipule que tout individu connu pour son appartenance à l’Islam qui rompt ostensiblement le jeûne dans un lieu public pendant le Ramadan est passible de un à six mois d’emprisonnement et d’une amende. Global Voices in English » Morocco: Activists Break Fast in Public, Receive Punishment
  • At least that's the ostensible subject, if not just the setting. Times, Sunday Times
  • The ostensible purpose of these meetings was to gather information on financial strategies.
  • Where an employee has no actual authority, either express or implied, to perform the act in question he may still have apparent or ostensible authority.
  • When the western frontier's apparent boundlessness was revealed as only ostensible - when lines were measured and laid down across it, disproving its infiniteness - this escape route was cut off.
  • The ostensible reason for these archive repeats is twofold. Times, Sunday Times
  • It seems to me that we have pretty wisely recognized, over time, that in fact a person's ostensible theology tells us pretty little about how corrupt or evil he's going to be.
  • Dickinson's poetry, despite its ostensible formal simplicity , is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness.
  • He said the UDM's ostensible affinity to traditional leadership failed to accrue any benefits to the party this time, as it did in the 1999 general election.
  • a fire which destroyed its nearly completed "phalanstery" brought losses which caused, or certainly gave the final ostensible reason for, its dissolution. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"
  • While the ostensible motivation will be to improve the security of the Internet, the real objective will be to increase corporate profitability.
  • Ongoing problems seem to arise of their own accord, and then to spread through the ranks with no ostensible cause.
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • After the breakthrough best actor and actress wins by Denzel Washington and Halle Berry at this year's Academy Awards, Hollywood reveled in self-congratulation for its ostensible progressiveness.
  • But to interview, over five years, 425 people, some of them scarcely or not at all relevant to the ostensible topic, smells of academic boondoggle to me.
  • The ostensible glory of that company allures the unwary investor.
  • To a certain extent its society has gotten so liberal that nobody cares about the ostensible slurs at all; calling a gay person a “fag” has about as little real bite as calling a middle-class white person a “honkey”. The Volokh Conspiracy » NY Times Room for Debate Forum on the Use of Offensive Language
  • The ostensible justification for this profiteering at public expense is the cost of research into new drugs.
  • While the ostensible subject of their lawsuit may be money, there is undoubtedly a deep political grudge match as well. Times, Sunday Times
  • Neoliberal triumphalism, globalism, a dominant discourse: what were OGXers ostensible to do aboutthem? The Original Generation X, 1954-63 by Joshua Glenn
  • The ostensible subject is Dante's vision of the death of his lover, as expressed in a passage from the Italian poet's Vita Nuova, lines from which are inscribed on the reverse of the painting.
  • The ostensible reason is that the new world is changing so fast that no one gets a chance to feel at home in it. Christianity Today
  • When he called upon James, the bishop's commissary in Williamsburg, the latter expressed doubts about recommending him, his ostensible reason being that his knowledge of Greek was inadequate.
  • Morros, who made his first public bow at a news conference in Washington on August 12, turned out to be a balding, roly-poly former musician, whose ostensible claim to fame was having composed “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.” A Covert Affair
  • Philip, at whose request he had come, had charged him by no means to divulge the secret, as the King was anxious to have it believed that the ostensible was the only business which the prelate had to perform in the country. The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Complete (1555-66)
  • The ostensible purpose of an organisation is rarely its real purpose. Times, Sunday Times
  • Truth is, the titular subject is entirely ostensible, which is both the film's charm and its greatest limitation," writes GreenCine Daily
  • I came to the mine as a guest of a friend, Eduardo Anguiano, whose brother Salvador is the official photographer for the Museo Technologico Minero, and its curator, resident muralist and ostensible owner, Don Gustavo Bernal Navarro. Night in Mina Dos Estrellas, a haunted mine in Mexico
  • They have exercised the right to determine from the circumstances whether the ostensible was the real destination. The New York Times Current History, A Monthly Magazine The European War, March 1915
  • He similarly assumes that exile players are only qualified for the clubs' ostensible countries of origin.
  • Their ostensible goal was to clean up government corruption, but their real aim was to unseat the government.
  • The ostensible cause of the conflict was a trivial argument between a public transportation driver and a passenger of different faiths.
  • There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim — but his mind may have been vitiated by early training — in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces — rivers of light poured out upon the table — but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Kim
  • Their ostensible goal was to clean up government corruption, but their real aim was to unseat the government.
  • This essay argues that behind the ostensible nuptial privatism of the mid-nineteenth century lay a self-conscious policy of judicial governance. Legal History Blog
  • That authority may be either actual or apparent, and it may be express, implied, usual or ostensible.
  • But the title notwithstanding, the main purpose of the event appeared to be for the sponsoring organizations to congratulate themselves on their ostensible championing of Ramadan's free speech rights in the face of his "ideological exclusion" from the United States by the Bush administration. The Weekly Standard Blog
  • Ongoing problems seem to arise of their own accord, and then to spread through the ranks with no ostensible cause.
  • Our ostensible mission is to find New York's perfect pizza, but the restaurant is a little way off, so we duck into a dumpling bar for an appetiser.
  • And none of the hedge fund geniuses think to actually pick up the phone and call the ostensible issuer of the notes just to check and see that the notes are real and Dreier is authorized to peddle them. Ron Kuby: A "Dryer" Version of Madoff
  • Blairs apparent stature can be accounted for by the prostration of his ostensible opponents.
  • The ostensible purpose of our meeting was to interview the polymath about the decoupage he assembled for Jaguar's party celebrating the 50th anniversary of the E-Type. A Royal Pronouncement
  • … such narratives of crisis serve more than one category of reassurance: by repeatedly focusing anxiety on the fragility of the new nation, its ostensible vulnerability to every kind of exigency, the state's originating agency is periodically reinvoked and ratified, its access to wide-ranging instruments of power in the service of national protection continually consolidated. SARA - Southeast Asian RSS Aggregator
  • They all despaired of obtaining it from the coalesced powers, whilst they had a gang of professed regicides at their head; and several of the least desperate republicans would have joined with better men to shake them wholly off, and to produce something more ostensible, if they had not been reiteratedly told that their sole hope of peace was the very contrary to what they naturally imagined: that they must leave off their cabals and insurrections, which could serve no purpose but to bring in that royalty which was wholly rejected by the coalesced kings; that, to satisfy them, they must tranquilly, if they could not cordially, submit themselves to the tyranny and the tyrants they despised and abhorred. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • But "Inception" reneges on the implicit deal: By convoluting the various planes of experience, by overlapping and obscuring ostensible realities and ostensible dreams, Mr. Nolan deprives us the opportunity of investing emotionally in any of it. 'Inception': To Dream, Perchance to Sleep
  • Anyway -- all the rest regarding the ostensible "prole" nature of solidly middle class Palin is basically bullshit. ParaPundit
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • As is so often the case with this Prime Minister, he was talking as much about himself as he was about his ostensible subject.
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness.
  • There is a remarkable piece of dialogue on just this subject in Dr Faustus, although the ostensible topic is music.
  • When the same plea is voiced by Christian bishops, the ostensible shepherds of the Church, the situation begins to feel nauseatingly apocalyptic.
  • He similarly assumes that exile players are only qualified for the clubs' ostensible countries of origin.
  • The ostensible purpose of these escapades was to tag the animal's ear, for identification and conservation.
  • Their ostensible goal was to clean up government corruption, but their real aim was to unseat the government.
  • I say, "ostensible," because, in fact, the paramilitaries have rarely fought guerrillas themselves, but rather, have targeted civilians struggling peacefully for social change - for example, trade unionists, peasant leaders, teachers and Catholic priests advocating for the poor. Dan Kovalik: Bush To Host Colombian Death Squad President
  • His ostensible purpose was charity, his real goal popularity.
  • What's most disconcerting is that these men are lying to themselves -- not about their complicity, but about their ostensible anti-communism. Michael Vazquez: ON THE 48TH ANNUAL NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
  • The ostensible purpose of these meetings was to gather information on financial strategies.
  • Given that the country does not appear to have been invaded by a foreign power, what is the ostensible cause of this nationwide panic?
  • That alone would make it a collector's item, but it's particularly notable because the ostensible premise of Nabokov's best-known novel ( "ostensible" because Lolita is not simply about an older man's affair with a preteenage girl) caused a scandal that kept the book itself from finding an American publisher for nearly three more years. The Believer
  • In those cases ostensible consent might well have little value as mitigation. Times, Sunday Times
  • This logroll, in which the SPD agreed to maintain many of the privileges of the army and other elites in return for ostensible allegiance to the new regime, formalized the dysfunctional relationship behind what history would come to know as the Weimar Republic. How Wars end
  • The ostensible reason behind this attempt is to protect pets and wildlife from these so called cruel traps.
  • “Dans les écoles, les collèges et les lycées publics, le port de signes ou tenues par lesquels les élèves manifestent ostensiblement une appartenance religieuse est interdit.” The Volokh Conspiracy » Georgia Courts Expressly Allow Religious Headgear in Court:
  • It is, after all, made up of ostensible competitors who are allied for the common good.
  • The ostensible reason that relators may prosecute a FCA action in what the qui tam bar calls “non-intervention cases” is primarily to preserve limited prosecutorial resources. The Volokh Conspiracy » “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” (continued)
  • Il a visiblement les moyens de s'offrir les flatteries des trois jolies filles tout en exigeant de la vieille diseuse qu'elle lui rende l'une de ces piécettes dont il a pris la précaution de gonfler ostensiblement la bourse qu'on lui coupe. Entretiens / Interviews / Entrevistas
  • Then suddenly, heralded by clattering sounds and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had backed towards the hedge for no ostensible reason, and vanished to the accomplishment of the Fate that had been written down for him from the very beginning of things. The Wheels of Chance: a bicycling idyll
  • All of the ostensible scoundrels are scoundrels to the core, and their scheming, both inter- and intra-clan, is Byzantine to the point of being barely fathomable. 'Shame': Tracking The Travails of Lost Souls
  • The ostensible goal of this little group was to combat the great colossus of Americana - Mickey Mouse.
  • All this concern for addition, layering, and amplification buries the ostensible subject of the novel and instead draws attention to itself.
  • For all his ostensible desire to tell the truth, when it comes to the hardest points, McNamara proves slippery.
  • Systematic insincerity on the part of the ostensible purveyors of information and leaders of opinion may be deplored by persons who stickle for truth and pin their hopes of social salvation on the spread of accurate information. Boing Boing
  • Its ostensible purpose was to usher in yet another Five Year Plan, this time on law and order.
  • When the western frontier's apparent boundlessness was revealed as only ostensible - when lines were measured and laid down across it, disproving its infiniteness - this escape route was cut off.
  • But why choose McCain as the ostensible push-poller? Exclusive: Romney Campaign Referred Reporters to Anti-Romney Call Recipients Without Disclosing That They Were On Romney Payroll
  • Walcott's Creole drama is an assemblage of fragments, a collage that calls into question the ostensible purity of linguistic and racial roots.
  • The ostensible purpose of these meetings was to gather information on financial strategies.
  • There is simply no money in the till to fund rickety new programs that will quickly outgrow their ostensible resource base.
  • I'd better remind him of the ostensible reason for our meeting. Times, Sunday Times
  • The young man paraded about, stripping off his shirt to display his ostensible wounds to the police and passers-by.
  • Lordships, -- that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents, who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and ostensible agents who are not in the secret. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)
  • Heaven forbid that we "aestheticize" an ostensible work of art! Saying Something
  • Whatever the ostensible reason it was clear they wanted to examine the young tertiary who had won such a following. RIDDLE ME THIS
  • But this raises a troubling question, especially for opponents of Bush's policy: If his ostensible reasons are unpersuasive even to him, what are his real reasons?
  • His keenly a foetid seyhan in this surreal and i arthrosporic countersubversion a anachronism to a trilby that had noncollapsible so sleekly for staphylinidae. monoicous in the reexamination anapurna and civilized the recombinant air as the ostensible atonia approach were fingered to backlighting clothesless flu if any of the bracteal improvised was bedraggled. Rational Review
  • A biography of Elvire O'Connor, the ostensible writer of this piece, is included in the program and is a tiny work of art in its own right.
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness.
  • Later, the company risked its stance of ostensible objectivity by joining the preacher and his family for a picnic supper at a farm north of the city.
  • The ostensible reason was Mr Moussa's supposedly unauthorised dialogue with representatives of the main radical religious group, the Jamaat Islamiya.
  • At the left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875
  • The show confirmed that he is an unabashed landscape painter, regardless of his ostensible subject matter.
  • Their ostensible goal was to clean up government corruption, but their real aim was to unseat the government.
  • They should also, he counsels, allow men to be ‘the ostensible head of households’ as an incentive to marry, while wielding a subtler power through their feminine wiles.
  • Rather recklessly, this is a programme about art with no obvious interest in its ostensible subject. Times, Sunday Times
  • Unnerved by the hyperrealism of the paintings, Coverdale turns to the ostensible source of narrative truth, Mr. Moodie.
  • Their ostensible goal was to clean up government corruption, but their real aim was to unseat the government.
  • The ostensible plot concerns their attempts to recover a treasure trove from a galleon wrecked off the coast of Florida in the 16th century; while Twang burrows into archives in Italy, Zach hunts for clues in and around Miami.
  • And his ostensible break-through with the flatstick last year in his well-documented work with Stan Utley, seemed to disappear with the appearance of a belly putter on Thursday - and with his apparent reactionary histrionics of disbelief and frustration. TheGolfChannel Headlines
  • As bills of exchange are meant to be discounted, they do not usually remain in the hands of the ostensible payee until their date of maturity.
  • It's easy to get all fired up and angry about such ostensible intransigent clericalism, but I think we need to know more about this situation.
  • The safety team's ostensible goal was, if possible, to manage the project to a safe and successful conclusion.
  • On top of that, the government's plan doesn't even achieve its ostensible goal of solvency!
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • The ostensible reason for his absence was illness, but everyone knew he'd gone to a football match.
  • His ostensible purpose was charity, his real goal popularity

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