mannerism

See also: Mannerism

English

mannerism (plural mannerisms)

A noticeable personal habit, a verbal or other (often, but not necessarily unconscious) habitual behavior peculiar to an individual.
- 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
  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.
Exaggerated or affected style in art, speech, or other behavior.

habitual behavior

exaggerated or affected style

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From Italian manierismo, from maniera, coined by L. Lanzi at the end of the XVIII century.

mannerism (countable and uncountable, plural mannerisms)

(art, literature) 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.
(art, literature) In fine art, a style that is inspired by previous models, aiming to reproduce subjects in an expressive language.