[syn: ceremonious, conventional]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Conventional \Con*ven"tion*al\, a. [L. conventionalis: cf. F.
conventionnel.]
1. Formed by agreement or compact; stipulated.
[1913 Webster]
Conventional services reserved by tenures upon
grants, made out of the crown or knights' service.
--Sir M. Hale.
[1913 Webster]
2. Growing out of, or depending on, custom or tacit
agreement; sanctioned by general concurrence or usage;
formal. "Conventional decorum." --Whewell.
[1913 Webster]
The conventional language appropriated to monarchs.
--Motley.
[1913 Webster]
The ordinary salutations, and other points of social
behavior, are conventional. --Latham.
[1913 Webster]
3. (Fine Arts)
(a) Based upon tradition, whether religious and historical
or of artistic rules.
(b) Abstracted; removed from close representation of
nature by the deliberate selection of what is to be
represented and what is to be rejected; as, a
conventional flower; a conventional shell. Cf.
Conventionalize, v. t.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
conventional
adj 1: following accepted customs and proprieties; "conventional
wisdom"; "she had strayed from the path of conventional
behavior"; "conventional forms of address" [ant:
unconventional]
2: conforming with accepted standards; "a conventional view of
the world" [syn: conventional, established]
3: (weapons) using energy for propulsion or destruction that is
not nuclear energy; "conventional warfare"; "conventional
weapons" [ant: atomic, nuclear]
4: unimaginative and conformist; "conventional bourgeois lives";
"conventional attitudes" [ant: unconventional]
5: represented in simplified or symbolic form [syn:
conventional, formal, schematic]
6: in accord with or being a tradition or practice accepted from
the past; "a conventional church wedding with the bride in
traditional white"; "the conventional handshake"
7: rigidly formal or bound by convention; "their ceremonious
greetings did not seem heartfelt" [syn: ceremonious,
conventional]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
160 Moby Thesaurus words for "conventional":
Christian, accepted, accordant, accustomed, acknowledged, admitted,
agreed, anal, approved, authentic, authoritative, average,
being done, bourgeois, button-down, canonical, ceremonial,
ceremonious, comme il faut, common, commonplace, compulsive,
concordant, conformable, conformist, conscientious, conservative,
constrained, consuetudinary, contractual, correct, corresponding,
covenantal, current, customary, de rigueur, decent, decorous,
established, evangelical, everyday, faithful, familiar, fastidious,
firm, fixed, folk, formal, formalistic, garden, garden-variety,
generally accepted, habitual, hallowed, handed down, harmonious,
heroic, hieratic, hoary, household, immemorial, in accord,
in keeping, in line, in step, inveterate, kosher, legendary,
literal, liturgic, long-established, long-standing, meet,
middle-class, moderate, mythological, naive, natural, nice,
no great shakes, normal, normative, obtaining, of long standing,
of the faith, of the folk, old hat, old-fashioned, oral, ordinary,
orthodox, orthodoxical, pedantic, plastic, pompous, popular,
precise, precisianistic, predominating, prescribed, prescriptive,
prevailing, prevalent, proper, punctilious, reactionary, received,
recognized, regular, regulation, reliable, responsible, right,
ritual, ritualistic, rooted, run-of-mine, run-of-the-mill,
sacerdotal, scriptural, scrupulous, seemly, set, simple, sober,
solemn, sound, square, standard, stately, stock, stodgy, straight,
stuffy, suburban, temperate, textual, time-honored, traditional,
traditionalist, traditionalistic, tried and true, true, true-blue,
understood, unexceptional, universal, unnoteworthy, unremarkable,
unsophisticated, unspectacular, unwritten, uptight, usual,
venerable, vernacular, well-mannered, widespread, wonted,
worshipful