conventionaladj.n.

1583 T. Stocker tr. Tragicall Hist. Ciuile Warres Lowe Countries ii. 5 a Rightes, Customes, Priuiledges..aswell Legale, Conuentionale, Customary, as Locale.

1592 W. West Symbolæogr.: 1st Pt. §19 C A pledge voluntarie or conuentionall, is a pledge diliuered by the couenant of both parties.

a1676 M. Hale Hist. Common Law (1739) 49 Conventional Services; as, Homage, Knights Service, Grand or petit Serjeanty.

1847 C. G. Addison Treat. Law Contracts (1883) ii. iii. §1 593 A conventional hypothecation is that which is founded purely upon contract.

1848 J. J. S. Wharton Law Lexicon 138/2 Conventional Estates, those freeholds not of inheritance or estates for life, which are created by the express acts of the parties, in contradistinction to those which are legal and arise from the operation and construction of law.

1861 G. Ross W. Bell's Dict. Law Scotl. (rev. ed.) Conventional Obligations, are obligations resulting from the special agreement of parties..in contradistinction to natural or legal obligations.

1804 W. H. Marshall Landed Property Eng. 3 Conventional Rents are acknowledgments reserved, by a proprietor of lands which he has thus temporarily sold—that he may have the right of convening the tenants, annually or otherwise, to his court or audit; to acknowledge him as..the reversionary proprietor, etc.

1883 Pres. Arthur in Pall Mall Gaz. 4 Dec. 8/1 In the absence of conventional engagements, owing to the termination of the treaty of 1848.

1885 Manch. Examiner 21 Mar. 5/1 Delegates of the Powers to meet in Paris to draw up a conventional Act..guaranteeing the freedom of the Suez Canal.

1864 J. Clay Treat. Short Whist iii, in J. L. Baldwin Laws of Short Whist 97 This method of play being as old as whist itself, it was certain, sooner or later, to be reduced to the conventional sign,—good in the lowest cards as well as the highest—of which I now treat.

1864 ‘Cavendish’ Princ. Whist 51 The instructed player frequently selects one card in preference to another with the sole object of affording information. When the principle is carried thus far the play becomes purely conventional.

1884 ‘Cavendish’ Princ. Whist (ed. 14) 105 The system of returning the higher of two losing cards when they are both small cards, is purely conventional.

1927 M. C. Work Contract Bridge iii. 39 A..baldly arbitrary and conventional scheme for handling strong two-suiters.

1958 Everyman's Encycl. III. 750/1 Conventional bidding, i.e. bids to which particular meanings are attached, is now accepted as an integral part of Contract Bridge.

1833 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus i. vi, in Fraser's Mag. Dec. 671/2 A tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire.

1844 A. P. Stanley Life & Corr. T. Arnold I. ii. 52 Breaking through the conventional phraseology with which English preaching had been so long encumbered.

1875 B. Jowett tr. Plato Dialogues (ed. 2) III. 384 What they saw was a conventional imitation of philosophy.

1851 J. Ruskin Stones of Venice I. App. xxi. 399 Representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute and equivalent.

1858 N. Hawthorne Fr. & Ital. Jrnls. II. 34 Some conventional costume, never actual but always graceful and noble.

a1878 G. G. Scott Lect. Mediæval Archit. (1879) I. 25 In their works you find the finest specimens of conventional or imaginary foliage.

1888 The Lady 25 Oct. 374/2 Some palm-trees and star-fish kind of flowers, which, I was told, were conventional lilies—classical, too, I suppose—for they were not like anything growing now.

1952 N.Y. Herald Tribune 21 Nov. We must decide whether the new fire package [sc. the hydrogen bomb] will permit a reduction of our more conventional military weapons.]

1955 M. Beloff Foreign Policy & Democratic Process 102 The knowledge that all-out war would almost certainly mean the annihilation of organized society of the country initiating it..must enter into the calculations of modern statesmen as a deterrent to war in a way in which the limited horrors of ‘conventional war’ could not.

1955 Hansard DXXXVII. 1970 This unique difference..between the hydrogen and the atomic weapon on the one hand and conventional weapons on the other.

1958 Times Rev. Industry Feb. 15/1 The rate of building both nuclear and conventional stations may well increase.

1958 Jane's Fighting Ships 1958–59 p. iv/1 The various admiralties and navy departments..have been shaken out of the static orbit of conventional ships, conventional propulsion and conventional weapons.