mannerism
/ˈmænəˌɹɪzəm/
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.28 in modern English
Meaning
noun
A noticeable personal habit, a verbal or other (often, but not necessarily unconscious) habitual behavior peculiar to an individual.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
In literature, an ostentatious and unnatural style of the second half of the sixteenth century. In the contemporary criticism, described as a negation of the classicist equilibrium, pre-Baroque, and deforming expressiveness.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
In fine art, a style that is inspired by previous models, aiming to reproduce subjects in an expressive language.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A style of art developed at the end of the High Renaissance, characterized by the deliberate distortion and exaggeration of perspective and especially the elongation of figures.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The Inspector looked round. He knew well enough that they were alone in the study at The Turrets, but the action had become something of a mannerism with him."
- "In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity."
- "artists […] dabblingly pursuing a kind of formalist mannerism merely in the interest of careerism"
- "He generally spoke without academic mannerism, though on occasion he dipped into the over-wrought thickets of eduspeak to find words like “antithetical” or “foci” or “interface.”"