conventionality
Americannoun
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conventionalities
plural
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conventional quality or character.
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adherence to convention.
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a conventional practice, principle, form, etc.
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conventionalities, conventional rules of behavior.
noun
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the quality or characteristic of being conventional, esp in behaviour, thinking, etc
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(often plural) something conventional, esp a normal or accepted rule of behaviour; propriety
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of conventionality
First recorded in 1825–35; conventional + -ity
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:
But when intellectuals refuse to render moral judgments, when they sink into safe conventionality, that in itself is a kind of judgment.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2025
The last thing her fans might have expected from a Britney Spears musical is dutiful conventionality.
From New York Times ● Jun. 22, 2023
Isaacs’s Jay has processed his loss by throwing himself into action and activism, which bears more than a little resemblance to the task-oriented conventionality of Birney’s Richard.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 13, 2021
In her first book, Moran occasionally came across as someone who bashed others for their bad taste or conventionality.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2020
Being Goth wipes away any expectation of conventionality, so Molly finds she’s free to be weird in lots of ways at once.
From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline
Because it’s a novel by Dag Solstad, none of these conventionalities are entered into.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 15, 2018
A fawning Harvard Business Review case study published in 2017 cast conventionalities like “paying full-time salaries and being focused on traditional employment” as “substantial disadvantages.”
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 2018
This is writing of a high order, and Berlinski demonstrates a continuous awareness of those heights—his conventionalities are superior to many writers’ originalities.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 21, 2016
Author Williamson's mystic cuts strident across a maze of conventionalities, but he is never cheap, affected, sentimentalized.
From Time Magazine Archive
Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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.
