formulaicadj.

1884 Cassell's Encycl. Dict. III. ii Formulaic equations.

1892 A. M. Clerke Familiar Stud. Homer i. 28 Formulaic and other expressions common to both.

1933 M. Parry in Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. LXIV. 179 (title) Whole formulaic verses in Greek and South-slavic heroic song.

1952 C. M. Bowra Heroic Poetry vi. 222 Not all heroic poetry shows these two kinds of formulaic elements on the same scale.

1953 Speculum 28 446 Parry, aided by Lord, demonstrated that the characteristic feature of all orally composed poetry is its totally formulaic character.

1963 R. Quirk in Brown & Foote Early Eng. & Norse Studies 171 While formulaic utterances and habitual collocations are the necessary starting point in the study of the early alliterative poetry, they are only a starting point.

1967 C. L. Wrenn Study Old Eng. Lit. iii. 51 Word-hord onlēac is a formulaic phrase from oral tradition.

1971 New Statesman 16 Apr. 529/2 There is something in the Homeric poems that carries them far beyond the standards of the oral, formulaic poetry of the Southern Slavs.

1957 Archivum Linguisticum 9 ii. 96 Cena (with which yantar was paired off formulaically).

1963 J. Lyons Struct. Semantics vi. 111 This convention..makes for easier reading of syntactic equivalences, formulaically expressed.

1966 S. B. Greenfield in E. G. Stanley Continuations & Beginnings 153 The first-person speaker recounts graphically (however formulaically) his tribulations as an exile upon the sea.