contrived

Agents contrived for one paid federal informant and then another to introduce themselves into his life.

Or, worse, they are contrived to sound tired, perhaps in an attempt to come off as world-weary.

The story is schematic and contrived rather than palpable and lived.

Granted, there was something fundamentally contrived about the experience—and not only because I was in Chicago instead of Spain.

Scientists tell us that from the point of view of optics the human eye is a clumsy instrument poorly contrived for its work.

Anyway there was a lot of embroidery on it, full of little holes, which somehow contrived to be extraordinarily fetching.

Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness.

It was not purposely contrived, it was in automatic obedience to deeper impulses than she knew.

As a consequence several varieties of curtains, all involving the use of asbestos, have been contrived.