CONVENTIONAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... to see the conventional young woman with classical wreath or feather headdress, whom we have placed upon our smallest coin, so that our children may all grow ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the planet, born into the complicated and bewildering social network of western civilization after war's end in 1945 and graduated from school after the onset of the Vietnam War in 1965, find themselves in a complex, frustrating jungle. Should they fit in or drop out? Those who are more conventional and adaptable fit in as best they can, although the recent high unemployment rate among the youth indicates that the adjustment is often difficult. Millions of the ...

— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... the scene before us renders an account of him particularly necessary. It is not easy to describe him. He was a very singular person. His manner of life and general bearing and conversation were so disregardful, in many particulars, of the conventional proprieties of his day, that it is not safe to receive implicitly the statements made by his contemporaries. By his peculiarities of some sort, he got a bad name. In the Book of Records of the First Church in Salem, ...

— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... preaching I find he has impressed truths to which I always assented in such a manner as to make them appear new, like a clearer revelation." Although his sermons were always couched in scriptural language, they were touched with the light of that genius which avoids the conventional and commonplace. In his other pastoral duties Emerson was not quite so successful. It is characteristic of his deep humanity and his dislike for all fuss and commonplace that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. A connoisseur in such matters, an old sexton, once remarked that on such occasions ...

— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... at all concealed from those who have often watched him at his work,—the glance, the tone, the spring, which are to tear that unfortunate witness into pieces, without infringing any one of those conventional rules which have been laid down for the ...

— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

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