conformist

1 of 2

noun

con·form·ist kən-ˈfȯr-mist

plural conformists

: one who conforms : a person who behaves in accordance with prevailing standards or customs and typically dislikes or avoids unconventional behavior

I'm running with the herd and swimming with the tide and being a good little conformist.—

Florence King

If most people you know are following a certain course, you may want to do the same—not because you are a conformist, but because so many people are unlikely to be wrong.—

Cass R. Sunstein

… the problem that many big-media journalists are now cautious, well-paid conformists distant from their audiences …—

James Poniewozik

conformist

2 of 2

adjective

: following or seeking to enforce prevailing standards or customs : opposing or avoiding unconventional thinking and behavior

The Franks were pious, conformist, and warlike; the Occitans, fun-loving and free-thinking.—

Joan Acocella

… offering two visions of a future based on choosing a less conformist society.—

Tracie Richardson

In eight essays, some previously published … Harper argues that conformist demands for so-called proper gender identities for the race have limited cultural images and life itself.—

Thomas Davis

The original Beats rebelled against a postwar society they saw as staid, conformist and commercial.—

Jeff Giles and Michael Rubiner

Examples of conformist in a Sentence

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Noun

Instead, many of them seem to be passive or active conformists, seizing upon the opportunities that the still-present market economy or big enterprises provide for young careerists. —

Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 15 Oct. 2024 Yet apart from their private passion, these letters, together with his son’s judgment, portray a rather wooden man, repressed and conformist. —

Colin Thubron, The New York Review of Books, 19 Jan. 2023

Adjective

Inspired by true events, a conformist mother who tries to fit in her neighbourhood determines to stand up to conventions to bury her son, lynched for being gay. —

John Hopewell, Variety, 22 Nov. 2024 For starkly conformist Brazil, Irwin’s sense of unconstrained freedom may help clarify just what enraged those destructive observers. —

Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2024 See all Example Sentences for conformist