conditioning
Americannoun
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conditionings
plural
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Also called operant conditioning, instrumental conditioning. a process of changing behavior by rewarding or punishing a subject each time an action is performed until the subject associates the action with pleasure or distress.
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Also called classical conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning, respondent conditioning. a process in which a stimulus that was previously neutral, as the sound of a bell, comes to evoke a particular response, as salivation, by being repeatedly paired with another stimulus that normally evokes the response, as the taste of food.
noun
adjective
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Origin of conditioning
Example Sentences
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After being shuttled in less than half an hour between aggressive air conditioning, a muggy Chicago street and the temperate library, the cup had begun producing condensation at an alarming rate.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026
Back in 2018, the hospital's air conditioning units had been approved to be replaced and upgraded, but eight years later this hadn't happened.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
His electric bill rose by only $52 a month, despite running his air conditioning and heating his pool and spa.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
This includes explaining the rising cost of doing business to his customers, avoiding refueling in California where possible and using alternative fuels to power air conditioning in trucks overnight.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
I was now training more than thirty-five hours each week, with an intense focus on strength, conditioning, and connecting my skills to ensure that the whole routine looked effortless.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
At both, the luxury treatment begins with a detailed scalp analysis followed by a neck and shoulder massage and repeated shampooings and conditionings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2025
If we are to have a more rationalized form of social control, then, it will undoubtedly take into consideration the necessity of forming the socially desirable conditionings of the emotional life.
From Taboo and Genetics A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family by Melvin Moses Knight
He sensed the change that possessed her, the struggling of new emotions, the shattering of imposed concepts and conditionings and their realigning to shape a new personality, a new person.
From Assignment's End by Roger D. Aycock
Francis Galton, pioneer student of the conditionings of human faculty, left an interesting study of the visualising capacity, so far as it could be attacked by the statistical method.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Louis Berman M.D.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
