How to Use folk hero in a Sentence

folk hero

noun
  • The life of a right-wing folk hero can be a busy (and profitable) one.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Goetz became a folk hero in a city dealing with sky-high crime.
    — Emmanuel Felton, Rachel Hatzipanagos and Ian Duncan, The Washington Post, Anchorage Daily News, 6 May 2023
  • As a cult artist of the ’90s and beyond with an Americana bent, Case kind of became a folk hero in both senses of the term.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 29 May 2023
  • At the heart of that contradiction is his status as folk hero.
    — JSTOR Daily, 24 June 2024
  • Bryson Barnes was already something of a Utah football folk hero.
    — Aaron Falk, The Salt Lake Tribune, 31 Aug. 2023
  • By then, Michael was already well on his way to becoming, for some, a local folk hero.
    — Molly Langmuir, Rolling Stone, 2 Feb. 2024
  • And don’t forget — he was cheered as a folk hero by people on the streets of Rostov-on-Don, which may inflate his ego further.
    — NBC News, 25 June 2023
  • Most Republicans, however, praised Vance as a folk hero and a bridge to the post-Trump future of the party.
    — Haisten Willis, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 17 July 2024
  • Bryson Barnes, a Utah folk hero of sorts, also remains in the quarterback room — and Whittingham has relied on him in the past in big games.
    — Kevin Reynolds, The Salt Lake Tribune, 31 July 2023
  • In his five years locked up, his folk hero stature has only solidified.
    — Jeff Weiss, Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Dillinger was the archetype of a peculiarly American folk hero: An outlaw famed for his or her crimes.
    — Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 21 July 2024
  • For Mangione’s supporters, the perp walk seemed to cement his status as a modern-day folk hero.
    — Lorena O'Neil, Rolling Stone, 9 Mar. 2025
  • In the aftermath, however, Scheffler became a bit of a folk hero.
    — Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel, 21 Jan. 2025
  • For a folk hero whose story is seldom told in 21st-century pop culture, William Tell was surely blessed with a great name.
    — Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 10 Sep. 2024
  • Kate Middleton, regardless of her health and status, is no folk hero.
    — Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 18 Mar. 2024
  • DiMaggio, a center fielder known as the Yankee Clipper, remains a folk hero.
    — Frederic J. Frommer, Kansas City Star, 18 Feb. 2024
  • The film brings to life the legendary story of the Swiss folk hero, offering both action and historical intrigue.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 14 Jan. 2025
  • There was once a time when a host who had returned without writers in the midst of a strike, citing concern for the rest of the show’s staff, could be forgiven, even treated like a folk hero.
    — James Poniewozik, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2023
  • In 1957, a coup ended the presidency of his grandfather, the Haitian folk hero Daniel Fignolé, and shattered the lives of the entire family.
    — Shannon Carlin, TIME, 31 Jan. 2025
  • But when Amir, as the youths gather in Tahrir Square, becomes a folk hero, his folk-y revolutionary guitar ballads drag the action to a halt.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 28 Oct. 2024
  • Overnight, the shop’s owner became a folk hero for a community that has felt beaten down and frightened amid a surge in overt antisemitism.
    — Katherine Rosman, New York Times, 21 Nov. 2023
  • In fact, many people are elevating the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, as a kind of folk hero.
    — Dr. Marcus Collins, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
  • Following the shooting, a community of fans lionized the shooter as a left-wing folk hero standing up for the common man against the evils of the US health care system.
    — David Gilbert, WIRED, 16 Dec. 2024
  • He's become enough of a folk hero that some businesses are comfortable associating with him — or at least, with the memes about him.
    — Jason Lalljee, Axios, 16 Dec. 2024
  • The running back has gone from cult hero to folk hero, displaying an uncanny knack for breaking tackles and for blowing people’s minds.
    — Bruce Feldman, The Athletic, 26 Dec. 2024
  • But his audacious plan to tag up an entire 10-car subway train — widely acknowledged as one of the first to ever try it — would make his career as a hip-hop folk hero.
    — August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2023
  • Gypsy Rose Blanchard is far from the first criminal, alleged or otherwise, to be valorized as a folk hero on the internet.
    — Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 6 Jan. 2024
  • The governor implored citizens not to turn Couch into a folk hero for evading capture.
    — Bill Hutchinson, ABC News, 12 Sep. 2024
  • In an exclusive new featurette, producer Fred Berger reveals that Chalamet learned and performed live 40 of the folk hero turned rock star's songs.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 26 Nov. 2024
  • Many have come to view Mangione as a sort of folk hero—expressing their outrage and frustration with the U.S.'s private health insurance industry.
    — Katherine Fung, Newsweek, 21 Feb. 2025

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