conventionalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make conventional.
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Art. to represent in a conventional manner.
verb
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to make conventional
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to simplify or stylize (a design, decorative device, etc)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of conventionalize
First recorded in 1850–55; conventional + -ize
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 the incessant, continuous pressure of the herd ... to conventionalize its methods of acquiring the gratification of its needs."
From Taboo and Genetics A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family by Melvin Moses Knight
Whichever group may be the oldest the art is there already advanced and the decoration has taken forms which must have occupied many kinds of workers to conventionalize from natural objects.”
From The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations by Zelia Nuttall
To the true romance the idea of marriage is at first repugnant, will not be thought about, for it seeks to square and conventionalize a great burst of the spirit.
From Hempfield A Novel by David Grayson
"I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind," she began brightly; but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize the situation.
From Miss Billy — Married by Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
Yet she did not know; she did not want to conventionalize him; there was something rather fine about his ruggedness.
From Partners of the Out-Trail by Harold Bindloss
They're perfectly legitimate to study and they're interesting, but the reason I'm less interested in them is because they're conventionalized.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2023
There are displays, often conventionalized within the norms of a culture: displays of power, strength, wealth, beauty, generosity, cleverness, and social status.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 26, 2013
He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.”
From Slate ● May 18, 2013
"Belasco Collar" At Stony Brook, N. Y., where ministers held a conference last week, the Rev. A. C. Robertson of Louisville, Ky., denounced the conventionalized clothing that clergymen affect.
From Time Magazine Archive
The iris, charming in nature and no less decorative in its conventionalized form, appears here and there in the carved woodwork and always gives a delicate twist to the Colonial design it embellishes.
From Remodeled Farmhouses by Mary H. Northend
This justifies the habit of conventionalizing natural forms, and the tendency of some kinds of hieratic art, like the Byzantine or Egyptian, to affect a rigid symmetry of posture.
From The Sense of Beauty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory by George Santayana
The Arundel Society have published some meritorious plates of this kind from Angelico,—not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but conventionalizing the whole too much into outline.
From Ariadne Florentina Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving by John Ruskin
Decadence is more manifest in the restriction and conventionalizing of the material of tragedy.
From Tragedy by Ashley H. Thorndike
Finally the hieratic simplified this form by symbolizing and conventionalizing to a large extent the hieroglyphic characters.
From History of Human Society by Frank W. (Frank Wilson) Blackmar
The modifying or conventionalizing forces are, therefore, quite vague.
From Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-1885, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 3-188 by William Henry Holmes
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.
