convenance
Americannoun
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suitability; expediency; propriety.
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convenances, the social proprieties or conventionalities.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of convenance
1475–85; < Anglo-French, equivalent to conven ( ir ) to be proper + -ance -ance
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It is equally obvious to anyone who knows Philip that he is not the type to submit meekly to the dictates of a dynastic manage de convenance.
From Time Magazine Archive
All that he has of good within him is cramped by convenance and fashion; for he who never feared the chance of fortune, trembles, with a coward's dread, before the sneer of the world.
From Nuts and Nutcrackers by Lever, Charles James
She made a marriage de convenance at the age of twenty, apparently without much thought of love upon either side, and entered upon her new career with all the confidence which characterized her.
From Home Life of Great Authors by Griswold, Hattie Tyng
Think you there would be no more marriages de convenance if we were to give the benefit of our experience to the world?
From Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 by Conrad, Robert Taylor
Marriages de convenance are when a parvenu barters his gold for good blood, or where an ancienne princesse mends her fortune with a nouveau riche, profound indifference, meanwhile, on each side.
From Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories by Ouida
There he will surrender himself to the existing order and convenances of society, since, so soon as he enters the salon, he conducts himself strictly by the rules of etiquette.
From The Student-Life of Germany by Howitt, William
It is of the convenances, and equally is it of her own melancholy necessities, that this poor Madame retires for a season to sorrow in a suitable seclusion in the company of her sympathetic cat.
From Lords of the Housetops Thirteen Cat Tales by Van Vechten, Carl
But in the case of a studio, les convenances are not so rigid but that one may look at pictures unchaperoned.”
From The Secret of Lonesome Cove by Adams, Samuel Hopkins
From a demure little nun she had in a few moments blossomed forth into a piquante little girl, who seemed quite ready to set the convenances at naught as long as she enjoyed herself.
From The Count's Chauffeur by Le Queux, William
But the social convenances are not to be measured by Oldchester's provincial ideas as to their strangeness.
From That Unfortunate Marriage, Vol. 1 by Trollope, Frances Eleanor
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.
