Conventional

How to spell conventional

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce conventional

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does conventional mean?

1. adjectiveFollowing accepted customs, standards, or traditional methods rather than anything new or unusual.

Conventional in a sentence

• The couple chose a conventional wedding in their local church.

• A conventional mortgage usually requires a larger deposit than a guaranteed one.

Where does conventional come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb convenire, meaning 'to come together' or 'to agree', formed from con- 'together' and venire 'to come'. From that verb came conventio, a 'meeting' or 'agreement', which English absorbed as 'convention'. The adjective 'conventional' was built on it in the 1400s to describe whatever rested on agreement or settled custom rather than on nature or law. Over time the sense drifted from 'agreed by formal convention' toward the everyday meaning of 'ordinary, traditional, following accepted habits'. The same venire root surfaces in a crowd of relatives such as 'venue', 'avenue', 'intervene' and 'invent', and the spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers hear con-VEN-shun-al but must remember the -tion before the -al.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• ven (from venire: to come)
• -tion (noun suffix)
• -al (adjective suffix)