(a.) Belonging to the form, shape, frame, external appearance, or organization of a thing.
(a.) Belonging to the constitution of a thing, as distinguished from the matter composing it; having the power of making a thing what it is; constituent; essential; pertaining to or depending on the forms, so called, of the human intellect.
(a.) Done in due form, or with solemnity; according to regular method; not incidental, sudden or irregular; express; as, he gave his formal consent.
(a.) Devoted to, or done in accordance with, forms or rules; punctilious; regular; orderly; methodical; of a prescribed form; exact; prim; stiff; ceremonious; as, a man formal in his dress, his gait, his conversation.
(a.) Having the form or appearance without the substance or essence; external; as, formal duty; formal worship; formal courtesy, etc.
(a.) Dependent in form; conventional.
(a.) Sound; normal.
Example Sentences:
(1) We present the analysis both formally and in geometric terms and show how it leads to a general algorithm for the optimization of NMR excitation schemes.
(2) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
(3) The appointment of the mayor of London's brother, who formally becomes a Cabinet Office minister, is one of a series of moves designed to strengthen the political operation in Downing Street and to patch up the prime minister's frayed links with the Conservative party.
(4) Eleven per cent of the courses that responded provided no formal substance misuse training.
(5) However ITV deny that any approach or offer, formal or informal, has been made.
(6) The wives and girlfriends who were originally invited to accompany their playing partners on the World Cup tour have had their invitations formally rescinded.
(7) This formalism allows resolution of the intrinsic protein folding-unfolding parameters (enthalpy, entropy, and heat capacity changes) as well as the ligand interaction parameters (binding stoichiometry, enthalpy, entropy, and heat capacity changes).
(8) This demonstrates a considerable range in surgeons' attitudes to day surgery despite its formal endorsement by professional bodies, and identifies what are perceived as the organizational and clinical barriers to its wider introduction.
(9) Children as young as 18 months start by sliding on tiny skis in soft supple boots, while over-threes have more formal lessons in the snow playground.
(10) Britain and France formally announced this week they would abstain, along with Portugal and Bosnia.
(11) After the formal PIRC inquiry was triggered by the lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, Bayoh’s family said police gave them five different accounts of what had happened before eventually being told late on Sunday afternoon how he died.
(12) Instituut voor Sociale Geneeskunde, Vrije Universiteit (The process of directing self-care, informal and formal assistance).
(13) He was greeted in Kyoto by Abe, with the men dispensing with the formal handshake that starts most head of governments' greetings in favour of a full body hug.
(14) A formal notion of relatability is defined, specifying which physically given edges leading into discontinuities can be connected to others by interpolated edges.
(15) Formal audits of the continuing medical education activities of physicians licensed in Michigan were undertaken to assess compliance with a law mandating participation in 150 hours of continuing medical education each 3 years.
(16) His central focus was on the neutrality of government rules – or what he called (on p117), "the Rule of Law, in the sense of the rule of formal law, the absence of legal privileges of particular people designated by authority" – not the elimination of government rules: "The liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are."
(17) The Washington Post report is the latest in a flurry of unattributed articles suggesting that the Justice Department is unlikely to take up formal charges against Assange.
(18) The government will formally begin the sale of Royal Mail on Thursday by announcing its intention to float the 497-year-old postal service on the London Stock Exchange.
(19) His formal entry into the contest marks a key moment in the nascent race for the Republican nomination, which is set to be the most congested presidential primary either party has held since 1976.
(20) The formal results of the analysis show that when psychological considerations are incorporated into a state-dependent utility model, the normative results customarily obtained concerning value-of-life need to be qualified.
Formalist
Definition:
(n.) One overattentive to forms, or too much confined to them; esp., one who rests in external religious forms, or observes strictly the outward forms of worship, without possessing the life and spirit of religion.
Example Sentences:
(1) This approach actually substitutes individual analysis and classification of a tumour for a formalistic consideration and is likely to offer the clinician a better decision-finding aid for therapeutic approach to the individual case.
(2) He also called for increased accessibility from the company, writing, “Today, if it is possible at all to get in touch with a Facebook representative, the best one may hope for are brief, formalistic answers, with rigid references to universal rules and guidelines.” “While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others,” a spokesman for Facebook said in response to queries from the Guardian.
(3) , “Borders except as formalistic markers of jurisdiction typically did not register prominently in the thinking of princes, not least because until the advent of modern systems of regulatory bureaucracy, rigorous border control was simply beyond the capacity of rulers.” According to the deal, Maley continues, Europeans could still migrate from place to place.
(4) This paper critically appraises the applied action-guide approach to bioethics and finds it wanting in two ways: it is tethered to a social contract view of the doctor-patient relationship that is largely incompatible with experiences of illness and care; and, as a formalist doctrine, it lacks critical edge and tends toward accommodationism.
(5) Therefore in a great number of cases statistical means were chosen from a formalistic point of view and not, as it would be much more appreciated, according to the specific nature of the data or to pertinent accounts.
(6) "People constantly describe me as a formalist or even a minimalist, but I'm not really bothered with the rules of painting or the history of painting.
(7) By recent work by Tinbergen in ethology confines the term to rigid, highly formalistic, exaggerated behavior by animals in situations of compromise formation, where the animal is moved by contrary impulses to action.
(8) New techniques were developed to examine the ability of these subjects to express emotion in words; formalistic and pragmatic analyses of the discourse were conducted.
(9) The court relied on formalistic evidentiary arguments to vitiate the patient's refusal of death-prolonging treatment.
(10) Similarly, in psychoanalytic writings the word is reserved for rigid formalistic actions which are defence mechanisms.
(11) So the future of the Fourth Amendment will therefore depend not on the particular doctrines of the case, but on whether the formalistic justices – the ones with a line of reasoning that lacks agility to deal with a radically changing world – prevail over those who take a broader constitutional vision.
(12) The decompensation of the insulin-dependent type of diabetes mellitus under domestic conditions results from a low level of education of patients and their family members with regard to therapy of this disease, a formalistic attitude to doctor's recommendations and the absence of a regular control over a course of disease.