mannerism

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See also: Mannerism

English

Etymology 1

manner +‎ -ism

Noun

mannerism (plural mannerisms)

  1. A group of verbal or other unconscious habitual behaviors peculiar to an individual.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, in The Celebrity:
      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.
  2. Exaggerated or affected style in art, speech, or other behavior.
Translations
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References
  • APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2007

Etymology 2

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From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Italian manierismo, from maniera, coined by L. Lanzi at the end of the XVIII century.

Alternative forms

Noun

mannerism (countable and uncountable, plural mannerisms)

  1. (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.
  2. (art, literature) In fine art, a style that is inspired by previous models, aiming to reproduce subjects in an expressive language.