The Collaborative International Dictionary
Conventionalism \Con*ven"tion*al*ism\, n.
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That which is received or established by convention or arbitrary agreement; that which is in accordance with the fashion, tradition, or usage.
All the artifice and conventionalism of life.
--Hawthorne.They gaze on all with dead, dim eyes, -- wrapped in conventionalisms, . . . simulating feelings according to a received standard.
--F. W. Robertson. (Fine Arts) The principles or practice of conventionalizing. See Conventionalize, v. t.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context uncountable English) adherence to social conventions; conventional behavior 2 (context countable obsolete English) A conventional act or constraint
WordNet
n. orthodoxy as a consequence of being conventional [syn: conventionality, convention] [ant: unconventionality]
Wikipedia
Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality. Although this attitude is commonly held with respect to the rules of grammar, its application to the propositions of ethics, law, science, mathematics, and logic is more controversial.
Usage examples of "conventionalism".
It is a record of how people can see fish and call them flesh or fowl, according to the conventionalisms of dogmatic tutors as purblind as themselves, according to their personal fears of losing invisible shares in non-existent heavenly mansions, according to their credulous belief that God may deny them wings if they, in turn, assert that a sight authoritatively declared to be straight from heaven may indeed have come straight from hell.