All 5 Uses of
conform
in
Middlemarch
- The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers—anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate.†
Chpt 1conformed = complied, fit in, or was similar to what is normal
- The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning, for when Dorothea was impelled to open her mind on certain themes which she could speak of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton, especially on the secondary importance of ecclesiastical forms and articles of belief compared with that spiritual religion, that submergence of self in communion with Divine perfection which seemed to her to be expressed in the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener who understood her at once, who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity, and could mention historical examples before unknown to her.†
Chpt 1conformity = compliance, fitting in, or being similar to what is normal
- In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the vibrations from a woman's glance.†
Chpt 2 *conforming = complying, fitting in, or being similar to what is normal
- It was one thing to look back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of falsehood.†
Chpt 5conformity = compliance, fitting in, or being similar to what is normal
- "She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small party, "though she has got into the way of putting her religion forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen and heaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."†
Chpt 8conform = to comply, fit in, or be similar to what is normal
Definitions:
-
(1)
(conform) to comply, fit in, or be similar to what is normal
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Although the forms conform and conformity (referring to complying with established customs or doctrines) are more often used, conformist is more likely to appear on standardized tests.