CONVENTIONAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Conventional

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/kənvˈɛnʃənəl/ Listen

adjective

Conventional adj.

Formed by agreement or compact; stipulated. "Conventional services reserved by tenures upon grants, made out of the crown or knights' service."

Growing out of, or depending on, custom or tacit agreement; sanctioned by general concurrence or usage; formal. "Conventional decorum." "The conventional language appropriated to monarchs." "The ordinary salutations, and other points of social behavior, are conventional."

(Fine Arts)

(a)

Based upon tradition, whether religious and historical or of artistic rules.

(b)

Abstracted; removed from close representation of nature by the deliberate selection of what is to be represented and what is to be rejected; as, a conventional flower; a conventional shell. Cf. Conventionalize, v. t.

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Etymology of 'Conventional'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Conventional" Quotes from Famous Books

... Others," one of the inimitable books of Edward Everett Hale, may be enjoyed in comfort. When midday comes the denser shade of tree or porch is sought, and coats come off. At noon dinner is welcome, and proves that the high cost of living is largely a conventional requirement. It may be beans or a bit of roast ham brought from home, with potatoes or tomatoes, good bread and butter, and a dessert of toasted crackers with loganberries and cream. To experience the comfort ...

— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... depends on the conventional regulation of those who use it, it will be constantly changing; new words will be introduced, and the spelling of old ones altered, so as to agree with modern pronounciation. We have all lived long enough to witness the truth of this remark. The only rule we can give in relation to ...

— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... Catherwood found herself on the way, of her own free will, to that Richmond from which she had recently escaped with so much trouble. There was no reason, real or conventional, why she should not go, as the precious pass from the Secretary removed all danger; and there in Richmond was Miss Grayson, the nearest of her blood. Helen removed the ...

— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... He was a big, sturdy, red-faced man, with a plain bluff manner, an ideal dealer; but his eyes were shrewd and keen. In fact once I had looked into them I put him down as a better man than I had fancied. We exchanged a conventional word on either side, and then both of us instinctively glanced ...

— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... words, but leaves its body, the verse, to be entombed, without hope of resurrection, in a mass of them. Cowley is generally instanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement of certain conventional combinations of words, a capacity wholly dependent on a delicate physical organization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

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