How to Use nostrum in a Sentence

nostrum

noun
  • The old nostrum that France is ungovernable may be tested again.
    — New York Times, 23 Apr. 2022
  • Christie’s other nostrum is to raise the retirement age.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 10 July 2023
  • This is a departure from the standard time-travel nostrum that any change to the past runs the danger of making things immeasurably worse in the future.
    — Jennifer Ouellette and Sean M. Carroll, Ars Technica, 24 Nov. 2023
  • More books, based on the Course, followed at a regular clip — at least six have climbed the New York Times best-seller list — each offering nostrums on the curative power of thought.
    — Sam Kestenbaum, New York Times, 5 July 2019
  • This episode of What’s Ahead lays out why Schumer’s nostrum is the economic equivalent of doctors who centuries ago thought bleeding patients was a great cure for all sorts of ailments.
    — Steve Forbes, Forbes, 3 May 2022
  • Medical patients resort to useless nostrums all the time.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2020
  • This good-governance nostrum, like many, is case-specific.
    — Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 22 May 2018
  • Yet Republicans show no doubts about their favorite nostrum.
    — Steve Chapman, chicagotribune.com, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — Peter Baker, New York Times, 24 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together.
    — NBC News, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Population trends today should raise serious questions about all the old nostrums that humans are somehow hard-wired to replace themselves to continue the species.
    — Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Affairs, 10 Oct. 2024
  • Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior.
    — David J. Lynch, Washington Post, 28 Jan. 2024
  • Marketers of economic nostrums such as cryptocurrency and gold investments don’t win customers by proclaiming that happy days are here again.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 6 July 2023
  • Talmadge was a reactionary who had come to big business’ notice by promoting such crude anti-labor nostrums as concentration camps for strikers and moving on to attacks on New Deal reforms.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2019
  • Good-guy Stevie’s ambiguous love lyric is superficially in sync with Biden’s tentative nostrum.
    — Armond White, National Review, 25 Nov. 2020
  • America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy, not revolution but restoration.
    — Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 19 June 2019
  • Perhaps there is a more natural nostrum – partial and insufficient, but helpful nonetheless – closer to hand.
    — Pavel Goldstein, Discover Magazine, 17 Jan. 2018
  • That’s because the agency’s duty is to stand in the way of businesses desiring to push unsafe and ineffective nostrums at unwary consumers, and also in the way of a perverse idea that personal freedom includes the freedom to be gulled by charlatans.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 17 Jan. 2025
  • That’s because the agency’s duty is to stand in the way of businesses desiring to push unsafe and ineffective nostrums at unwary consumers, and also in the way of a perverse idea that personal freedom includes the freedom to be gulled by charlatans.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2023
  • The alternative-energy nostrum is make-believe, as are the other administration excuses for the sharp increase in gasoline prices.
    — Benjamin Zycher, National Review, 17 Mar. 2022
  • Wayne was married three times and aged into a parody of himself, playing slight variations on the same role while in his political life spouting Bircher-ish nostrums about patriotism as compensation for his guilt over not fighting in the war.
    — Scott Stossel, WSJ, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Studies reporting behavioral improvement from treatment with turmeric and green tea vex skeptics of dietary nostrums.
    — Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2019
  • Another consequence is that the focus on arming teachers and other nostrums directed at school campus safety shifts attention from gun-safety policies much more likely to work.
    — Michael Hiltzik, latimes.com, 16 Mar. 2018
  • But writers such as Holiday attempt to transform Stoicism into an antibiotic or nostrum.
    — Tom Bissell, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Apr. 2023

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