convention-trained

Updated: May 8, 2025

Her father's character and what he stood for, her mother's decency and love of virtue, her cleanly-minded, right-living brothers and sisters, all had been forgotten and here she was, a tainted maiden, virtuous in technical sense it is true, but tainted. Her convention-trained conscience smote her vigorously and she groaned in her heart.

Theodore Dreiser - The "Genius"

It occurred to me at once that, with her knowledge of my convention-trained habits, she would argue that, at a luncheon party, either I would not have placed the lady next the man to whom she belonged, or that she was a perfectly independent guest, belonging, so to speak, to nobody. But on the latter hypothesis, what was she doing in this galley?

William John Locke - The Mountebank