only 1 use
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Definition
unnatural seeming (due to careful planning)
or more rarely:
arranged (that something should happen)
or more rarely:
arranged (that something should happen)
- I think Ty, for all his experience with the basics of farm contrivance, where convenience and practicality, and even happenstance, precede any notions of appearance, still envisioned the barn transformed and these other buildings laid out in a parklike setting, perhaps even magically elevated so they could be viewed from a distance and admired, the way we admired farms down near Tama or Cedar Rapids, that crowned hillsides and looked off to the south.p. 168.2
There are no more uses of "contrived" in A Thousand Acres.
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