How To Use Contrived In A Sentence
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The sense of camaraderie was strong and uncontrived.
Times, Sunday Times
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But as if divining his thoughts -- just as they passed through the dining-room door, Euphra looked round at him, almost over Funkelstein's shoulder, and, without putting into her face the least expression discernible by either of the others following, contrived to banish for the time all Hugh's despair, and to convince him that he had nothing to fear from Funkelstein.
David Elginbrod
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She is an uncontrived champion of the Scots language.
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A poor script with bad dialogue and a cheesy, contrived family crisis doesn't help her much.
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Stokton, a fishmonger, Thomas Yong, a saddler, and Robert Jakes, a shearman — all of whom had more than once been convicted of perjury, and on that account been struck off inquests — had contrived to get themselves replaced on the panel, and had been the chief movers in the recent actions against the late mayor and other officers of the city.
London and the Kingdom - Volume I
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How could it be that in a situation as artificially contrived as a television studio, you could get this frank and free discussion between two people?
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It is no more than a cleverly crafted lump of inorganic matter; its shape and working parts are contrived to facilitate the intended function: the switching around of the circuitry in clearly defined ways.
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They're never overly clever with anything that they do, chord progressions and bass lines are hardly contrived.
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And don't get me started on the frowzy little strips of bunting that many business houses feel so fully demonstrates good corporate citizenship, or the contrived costuming of employees in the same pursuit.
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One can also take issue with the contrived nature of the chase scenes, which were of no dramatic value but rather served to showcase the cinematography and visually exploit the cityscapes of Rome.
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Their sudden outburst was obviously genuine; it couldn't have been contrived.
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During my brilliant and audacious performances, my family constantly remarked that they thought I sang like Shirley Temple, only way better and a lot more adorably, and that my dancing made hers look contrived and boring.
Roseanne Archy
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The electricians had contrived a catchment pool and a wheel in the torrent close at hand -- for the little Mulhausen dynamo with its turbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water driving, and on the sixth day in the evening the apparatus was in working order and the Prince was calling -- weakly, indeed, but calling -- to his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world.
The War in the Air
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Those wildlife docs are the product of hundreds of hours of footage cut and pasted into a contrived narrative by creative editors.
Times, Sunday Times
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Of course, rituals can be contrived both to reduce contingency [so-called confirmatory rites] and to create it [rites of resistance]; the connections here are multiple and complex.
Against Exceptionalism: A New Approach to Games
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It seemed very contrived to go after the kidult audience.
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The music consisted of a band of guitars, from which the performers, common men, and probably self-taught, contrived to draw wonderfully good music, and, in the intervals of dancing, played airs from the Straniera and Puritani.
Life in Mexico, During a Residence of Two Years in That Country
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Her golden-brown shining hair waved back from a side parting with that carefully contrived artlessness which is the crowning achievement of a coiffeur, and in colour it exactly matched her soft frock, which was of the sports variety with a finely pleated skirt.
Juggernaut
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It was as if the claimant's complaint had been without any merit at all, as if it had been contrived.
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But the current onslaught of polls brought about by the media since, for example, Health Care reform has been discussed is mazingly contrived.
CNN Poll: Dems becoming less popular but no gains for GOP
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The plot is contrived in a lot of places and uses some lazy devices in others.
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It just seemed like too much of a switch, too contrived and artificial.
Times, Sunday Times
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Somebody already addressed this elsewhere stating that the alleged "creakiness" numbers were contrived & exaggerated & mitigated by vehicle processing activity.
The NASA Administrator Guessing Game Continues - NASA Watch
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His most glaring error was a simple finish into an empty net from four yards that he contrived to miss.
Times, Sunday Times
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A rumour went round that Snowball had after all contrived to introduce poison into Napoleon's food. At eleven o'clock Squealer came out to make another announcement.
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Sures must have had tongue in cheek when she contrived Ghirlandina, a cast-paper relief of an old, crooked, leaning tower, wonderfully abraded and polychromed.
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These secular conditions, Bushman suggests, can be understood in two ways: for nonbelievers they help to explain Mormonism's "origins," a word Bushman eschews for the more neutral "beginnings"; for Mormons they can be studied as divinely contrived preparations for the dawning of a new era.
Secrets of the Mormons
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Its "longish denouement" is "corny and contrived, but we seize on it with relief - as we seize on the Mahleresque romanticism of Gabriel Yared's score.
GreenCine Daily: The Lives of Others and The Decomposition of the Soul.
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Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments, or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
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After a given electoral defeat, the left consoles itself with the illusion that a cabal of this nature would have contrived the lowest, slimiest smear it could have hoped to get away with, found some moneybags to fund it, snuck it into the public debate, and swayed the weak-minded.
Deconstructing Obama
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The young gentleman declared, rubbing his eyes, that he did not want it now; but however Fleda contrived to dispel that illusion, and bread and butter was found to have the same dulcifying properties at Queechy that it owns in all the rest of the world.
Queechy
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Anything else is artificial and contrived.
Christianity Today
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They are those rare specimens whose loyalty is uncontrived and non-cynical.
Times, Sunday Times
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Here it is too much to suppose that the _umbracula_ were contrived to make up for the want of shade in a country so covered with woodland as Italy was then; and the words "_sertis vincta_" show that there was some special meaning in the practice.
The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
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Courcelles succeeded in robbing the prisoners who were in his charge in a more cautious manner than his predecessor; he, in short, contrived to subtract something for himself from any remittances which reached them, and paid them francs for livres.
The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1
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Frankly, I'm more inclined to find the former more contrived, since a remorseless thug and repenting Christian is a believable dyad.
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Some have praised the film for its uncontrived, natural feel.
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One must see people undressed to judge truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal his hump back.
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
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The unification feels contrived: it is only the humour that feels true.
Times, Sunday Times
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Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this warming – pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for hidden fire — a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion, and which I am not in a condition to explain?
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
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There were some who said it was a monkish trick, contrived for his own ends by one of the brethren from Beauvais, but, less than six months later, all Scotland believed that the skeleton masquer at Jedburgh had, indeed, come to warn an unfortunate land of its approaching doom.
Stories of the Border Marches
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The young gentleman declared, rubbing his eyes, that he did not want it now; but, however, Fleda contrived to dispel that illusion, and bread and butter was found to have the same dulcifying properties at Queechy that it owns in all the rest of the world.
Queechy
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One of the pleasures of this novel is Cunningham's description of these intoxicating homes, from the "insistent glittery buzz" of a Manhattan party to a rambling mansion on the coast, "all fieldstone and gables, girded on three of its four sides by verandas; contrived, somehow, with a sense of absolute authenticity.
Michael Cunningham's "By Nightfall," reviewed by Ron Charles
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Attracted in turn to the youthful pulchritude of Laura and Claire, he describes his obsession for the latter as ‘pure desire in a void’, but it is a contrived passion that could be more aptly characterised as devoid of pure desire.
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At least it is safe to say that both series manage to avoid those horribly contrived plot twists whose only purpose is to tie up loose ends.
Times, Sunday Times
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Credit to both sides for braving the elements and playing this game but, really, the weather contrived to make good football impossible and this game was very one-sided indeed.
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In some places the use of more colloquial language seems to work and not detract from the original gospels, but in other places it came across to me as contrived.
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He's down-to-earth, gesticulating all over the place, with folksy aphorisms and punch lines all put in the right spots, but in an unforced, uncontrived matter.
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Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery.
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
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So saying, the indignant Sage nevertheless plunged the contemned pieces of gold into a large pouch which he wore at his girdle, which Toinette, and other abettors of lavish expense, generally contrived to empty fully faster than the philosopher, with all his art, could find the means of filling.
Quentin Durward
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Also, to secure the oar from the weather (for I used it in mild breezes as a flagstaff top of my pyramid from which to fly a flag I made me from one of my precious shirts), I contrived for it a covering of well-cured sealskins.
Chapter 19
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I do not think these coincidences were consciously contrived.
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This reaction seems drastic and contrived to me. wha? in pa
Graham move imperils Obama agenda
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The U.S. government is to stop using the term "illegal enemy combatants," a label contrived by the Bush administration to justify detaining people indefinitely without ever bringing them before a court or even granting them prisoner-of-war status.
Embassy
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The death of William, his only legitimate son, in 1120 in the wreck of the White Ship brought Henry's whole carefully contrived edifice tumbling down.
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Somehow they contrived to live on her tiny income.
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The premise sounds contrived but the reality is insightful.
Times, Sunday Times
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Though supposedly posing a test of survival skills, the desert-island situation was rather contrived.
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At times his work gets bogged down in its own abstract acrobatics, becoming contrived and overwrought.
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The script is contrived and unbelievable.
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The lawsuit says oil companies contrived a gasoline shortage in the early 1970s.
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Over the past five years, each have contrived to reduce the events to farcical levels, at least once.
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They're genuinely unspoiled because Canadians have a knack of preserving their heritage that's uncontrived, in spite of the demands placed on the environment by modern tourism.
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Man is a product of nature, the argument runs, but societies are contrived by men.
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But fast as they run they stay there so long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry; after they have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at
The Strand District The Fascination of London
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It was as if a little mechanical toy should be contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly _make_ it.
Browning's Heroines
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I often managed, in our short interviews, to give them notes which Madame Élisabeth had contrived to secrete from the searches of the municipals; these notes usually related to information desired by Their Majesties.
The Ruin of a Princess
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As for all other pretences, they are nothing but death and damnation dressed up in fair words and false shews; nothing but gins, and snares, and trapans for souls, contrived by the devil, and managed by such as the devil sets on work.
Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. II.
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By some magic of duty, he had contrived to give his usually hebetudinous features an expression of enthusiasm.
Within the Law
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I was satisfied, however, that her account of the relevant conversations was an honest one, in the sense that they had not been deliberately contrived by her as a false account.
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Upstairs, besides the bedrooms, was a little chapel with some remains of Gothic carving, and a few interesting pictures of the fifteenth century; a cunningly contrived priest-hole, and a long gallery lined with dusty books, whither my lord used to repair on rainy days.
Vanishing England
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I made another six on the spot, and this is the way in which I contrived to write them, I had let the nail of my little finger grow long to serve as an earpick; I out it to a point, and made a pen of it.
The memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
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The builders of Night Watch had contrived to place the diesel engine in the most inaccessible part of the bilge.
CORMORANT
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‘Ruse’ applies to that which is contrived as a blind for one's real intentions or for the truth.
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The lyrics - slightly surreal sometimes - are suitably uncontrived, simplistic and understandable.
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By far the most blatantly contrived element of the play is the happy and neatly accounted for ending, with a stereotypical Hollywood double wedding scene.
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It all seems entirely uncontrived, but, on closer inspection, one notices geometric lines and angles.
Times, Sunday Times
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This is how a Carmelite is entreated by the Rule to move through the corridors of the convent; but in her case, it was too perfect; it was contrived to shield her.
INVIDIA
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A man of the right temperament gains greatly by a temporary estival transplantation; and if Johnny always contrived to seem dominant and prosperous at home, he now seemed lordly and triumphant abroad.
On the Stairs
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Meantime the hump of that awful bump Into the heavens contrived to get To so great a height that they called the wight The man with the minaret.
INTERNET WIRETAP: The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce (1993 Edition)
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The format must be manipulated and contrived to prevent anything extemporary or natural from happening on the screen.
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Sir Phelim O'Neil, the most considerable man of his name tolerated in Ulster, was looked upon as the greatest acquisition, and at his castle of Kinnaird his associates from the neighbouring counties, under a variety of pretexts, contrived frequently to meet.
A Popular History of Ireland : from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics — Complete
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Fortunately this morning Rose had contrived to rid himself of Naseby's services.
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Power parting might sound contrived, but it's got to be better than this.
Times, Sunday Times
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I am concerned that any attempts to make this a continuation of the rest of the house will look artificial and contrived.
Times, Sunday Times
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So the notion that propaganda is bad but free speech is good is a carefully contrived nonsense designed to allow the IOC to kowtow to the bullyboy Chinese Communists.
Archive 2008-04-06
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'Twas not dumb chance that, to discover the fougade, or powder plot, contrived a miscarriage in the letter.
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy
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Similar displays contrived by architects occur on almost any sunny day inside many cathedrals, when the sun pierces the highest windows and a thousand rays gleam down on the altar.
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If you can get beyond the fact that there's all sorts of contrived controversy thrown into the TV show, and deliberate ploys to create situations that will boost ratings, the level of talent is really pretty amazing.
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It doesn't matter how many times we are told to drop everything and be one hundred percent uncontrived and natural, we still hold on to the letting go.
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Through the sparkling breadth of white, which seemed to glance my eyes away, and outside the humps of laden trees, bowing their backs like a woodman, I contrived to get along, half-sliding and half-walking, in places where a plain-shodden man must have sunk, and waited freezing till the thaw should come to him.
Lorna Doone
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The student had fabricated the story and, as it later appeared, contrived the voice of the second source as well.
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We submit that even those who impeach the Deity for opening the door to sin would on second thoughts confess that morally free -- and therefore peccable -- beings stand on a higher level than marionettes, however faultlessly contrived to perform certain evolutions.
Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive
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The Maltings' interior design is obviously not to the judge's taste: it is said to be ‘entirely contrived, with a tricksy decor strong on salvaged somewhat quirky junk’.
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Months ago Christchurch with its settled and established look contrasted cozily with much of the rest of New Zealand's cityscapes which convey an image of contrived modernity bordering on transience.
Peter Isaac: Will Christchurch Have to Move Somewhere Else?
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Together they constitute an unhackneyed commentary on a creative force who contrived to remain both forbidding and inescapable.
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There were medley-pictures contrived of photographs cut out and grouped together in novel and unexpected relations; and there were set about divers patterns and pretences in keramics, as the decoration of earthen pots and jars was called.
The Coast of Bohemia
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And those who believe in the idea of the ultimate municipalization of most large industries, will continue to find in this non-localized class, working especially through the medium of Parliament, a persistent and effective obstruction to all such projects, unless such a rectification of areas can be contrived as will overtake the delocalization and the diffusion of interests that has been and is still going on.
Mankind in the Making
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By doing so they contrived to create, among other problems, the great gasoline shortage of the 1970s.
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In fact, the entire notion of ‘scarcity’ is a bugaboo contrived by conservative economists to justify the distributional injustice of the capitalist system.
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I contrived to give one of them a smart tap on the crown before they came to close quarters; but ere I could recover myself they were upon me, the staff was wrenched from my grasp, and I was as hard put to it as a stag bayed by hounds.
Humphrey Bold A Story of the Times of Benbow
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The result is the sort of mess you might well expect a bunch of stoners to come up with; it's contrived, with the thinnest of possible plots, badly acted, and silly.
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It is hard in retrospect to think quite how we contrived to slalom through last week.
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Americans must focus on reason and civility over contrived irrational, fear driven emotionalism from the shrill right wing.
'Tea Party Express' trucks on with tour aimed at health care
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Twice the big Englishman was presented with a gaping goal and the perfect ball but twice he somehow contrived to miss the target.
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Charles' investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969 may have seemed like the enactment of some ancient ceremony, but it was contrived for the occasion.
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They contrived a mask against poison gas.
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Wednesday — her brothers, and some of their people, will scatteringly, and as if they knew nothing of you, [so we have contrived,] see you safe not only to London, but to her house at
Clarissa Harlowe
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But here the seaside elements are tongue in cheek rather than contrived.
Times, Sunday Times
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We are forced to watch scenes contrived by someone's late night imaginings of the way things should have been in romances now past, with requisite confessions of untold secrets and tender kisses of palms and the freedom to dance unwatched.
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There is something natural and uncontrived about the presence of children at the liturgy in Byzantine and Oriental churches.
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In their opinion, he belonged to that goodly class of persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in the Abbe of Weimar’s presence, afterwards abused the sacred narre of pupil.
Maurice Guest
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The projects themselves were trivial, closer to a test contrived by a college fraternity than a business school, and that was the point.
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Although the situations are often ridiculous, the gags don't feel overly contrived.
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The goal was gaping but somehow he contrived to clip the chance wide.
The Sun
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“A contrived sense of guiltiness,” wrote analyst Stephen Mitchell, “can serve as a psychological defense against a more genuine sense of pathos or sadness for oneself.”
THE HUSBANDS AND WIVES CLUB
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But any significant new insights into that strange, perverse Jacobean tragicomedy contrived to pass me by.
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But the narrative is too episodic and the dialogue too contrived for it to have the same impact as Happiness.
Times, Sunday Times
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Traditional music fans might like to take note of a new CD titled ‘Fortune Favours The Merry’, an album of joyous, uncontrived music on fiddle and flute from two musicians with a lot of talent and experience.
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The whole thing is not uncontrived, obviously, and can feel a bit spreadsheety.
Times, Sunday Times
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a novel with a contrived ending
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They contrived a mask against poison gas.
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For a movie that seems contrived as a backdrop for madcap hilarity, there's precious little hilarity to distract you from the backdrop.
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The seemingly haphazard arrangement of pavilions was a contrived effect, it can be seen as a stand against the Beaux Arts tradition.
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The lawsuit says oil companies contrived the oil shortage in the 1970s.
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These are far less formal, contrived changes than those in the documentary novels.
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In this case, their activity would be considered as gainful work, provided the activity did not appear to be deliberately contrived to meet the scheme's requirements.
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To complete his tapestry of interwoven plots, the resolution had to be brilliantly contrived.
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although her popular image was contrived it served to inspire music and pageantry
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But the narrative is too episodic and the dialogue too contrived for it to have the same impact as Happiness.
Times, Sunday Times
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This theme is played out through a dozen strangers who become related by artfully contrived coincidence.
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In the end, a few short minutes in such contrived circumstances did little to further the debate on the something already described as a ‘national disgrace’.
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Public transit does not function in this kind of contrived environment.
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Even those who do not condemn democracy out of hand have often contrived more subtle ways of disparaging it.
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One critic described the movie as "a stale and hopelessly contrived comedy".
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Instances are quoted of highly contrived antithesis, of mixed metaphor and elaborate circumlocution.
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About nine-and-twenty years ago, the fencible men of Col were reckoned one hundred and forty, which is the sixth of eight hundred and forty; and probably some contrived to be left out of the list.
A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland
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Wendy", as it is a contrived name first found in a popular fiction, and given its similarity to "windy", is hardly any better -- as it suggests a verbal facility with rhetoric designed, pace Burke's conception of Dramatism and the pedant, to elide the varied and opposed interests of the so-called abled community and those of persons with disabilities.
Readercon 16: Day 1
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Many believed that the smooch was contrived for the camera but the identities of the sailor and the nurse have remained an unsolved mystery.
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Richter contrived a scale to measure the force of an earthquake.
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Just when one thinks the Justices might zig, they zag, but whichever way they turn, their reasoning seems increasingly arbitrary and contrived.
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Instead of the dodgy, contrived stereo mixes, these albums find that inimitable voice riding with the music rather than sitting on top of it.
The Sun
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However, instead of flinching from the set-up, contrived to tame its workers, the restaurant defended that this was a strategy aimed at upgrading the quality of its employees, mostly young people.
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There was a sense of abandonment about the lawns, banks and shrubberies: she did not realize that it was contrived.
DISPLACED PERSON
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This is less critical for a formal pond, but natural ponds need siting where they look uncontrived.
Times, Sunday Times
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Her books are nothing but contrived morality tales, instilling in tween girls the ideas that their “one true love” will have a treacherous relationship with them, and if they give in to “temptation” Bella will die.
'New Moon': A Hater's Guide | EW.com
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His intuition, the problems he set himself, and the solutions that he found, all exhibit something extraordinarily ingenious, something original in an uncontrived way.
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Since then, video of the so-called blowup has surfaced on YouTube, courtesy of Brazil's Multishow - and the whole thing seems a little contrived.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Local News
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Whereas the term "sentimental" can be used more often than not to hint at an indulgence in the emotionality it can imply, when speaking of a movie it might refer to the film being used to pull on the heartstrings and provoke the tear ducts of the audience in a contrived and calculated manner.
Carol Smaldino: A Surprise of Sentiment and 50-50
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BY this very elaborate and poetically ingenious figure, the prophet appears to be giving a contrived representation of the fact, that when God brings in the promised day of his universal reign in the earth, there will be a grand convergency of causes to prepare it, and, like so many concurrent prayers, to make common suit for it before Him.
Christian Nurture.
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Fortunately this morning Rose had contrived to rid himself of Naseby's services.
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The goal was gaping but somehow he contrived to clip the chance wide.
The Sun
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Helpless beyond measure in all the duties of practical statesmanship, its members or their dependants have given proof of remarkable energy in the single department of peculation; and there, not content with the slow methods of the old-fashioned defaulter, who helped himself only to what there was, they have contrived to steal what there was going to be, and have peculated in advance by a kind of official post-obit.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861
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I can take all sorts of convoluted and contrived plot-lines and bizarro science-faction, but as a person-of-gadgets, it aggravates me enormously when ordinary gadgets do extraordinary things.
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As they ate, he put her at ease with his uncontrived interest in who she was and what she was about.
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It carefully contrived the fantasies of a modern Roman Empire and grafted the passion for unrestricted authority on to the viceroy, governors and administrators who were greeted as proconsuls and centurians.
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The world rang with stories of his romantic bravery, his gallantries, his eccentric manners, and his political intrigues, for he nearly contrived to be elected King of Poland.
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Still he contrived to obtain permission to carry him to the top of the Tower, on the plea that fresh air was essential to his health, and tended him so assiduously, that while the prisoner was partially restored, and could walk about, the strength of his custodier broke down.
Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton
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I could also hide my skill very dexterously, which is generally found a work of great difficulty, and judiciously winning or losing, I contrived to make it answer my purpose, -- until one day, going to a table which I was very much in the practice of frequenting, and where no one was then engaged, I was invited by a stranger to play.
The Gaming Table : Its Votaries and Victims : Vol. 2
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A nasty, overwrought contrived thriller about a woman suspected of bumping off her appalling husband.
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It is certain he had a way of bringing it into less form for the many sudden causes he had to do with in the streets; but how he contrived to correct, sweeten, concenter, and qualify it — I vex not my spirit with the inquiry.
A Mystery with a Moral
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Now that it has contrived a major transformation, it is accused of mindless vandalism.
Times, Sunday Times
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The notable Mrs. Mittin contrived soon to so usefully ingratiate herself in the favour of Mr. Dennel, that, in the full persuasion she would save him half his annual expences, he married her: but her friend, Mr. Clykes, was robbed in his journey home of the cash which he had so dishonourably gained.
Camilla: or, A Picture of Youth
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I felt that the twin analogies were contrived for Margaret, then mad at myself because how would I know?
The Thirteenth Tale - SciFiChick.com
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I don't know anything about any curse, it sounds like a lot of contrived rot to me.
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It has somehow contrived to lose 3.5 billion.
Times, Sunday Times
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But he somehow contrived to scoop over the bar and then also fired another shot woefully off target.
The Sun
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It would have been very easy for Neel's character to have become too good to be true, but that is never a danger with Kusturica's earnest, uncontrived playing of him.
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The plot is contrived after the orthodox manner, the story is told with a mystery well maintained to the last page.
Times, Sunday Times
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He contrived to preserve, in the most abstrusely philosophical of these writings, a simplicity and clarity which, although they have not commended him to professional metaphysicians, make his attitude to the problems of metaphysics extremely intelligible.
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
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The orangery is often contrived so as to be used as a kind of living-room during summer, as it is only intended for the reception of the orange trees, and other plants belonging to the genus Citrus, during winter.
The Lady's Country Companion: or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
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Incidentally, Tennyson’s “samite” (inMorte d’Arthur, as worn by the disembodied arm that belongs to the Lady of the Lake) was a brilliantly contrived exercise in etymological archaeology, and strictly speakingmeant (via the Latin samitum and, in turn, the Greek hexamiton) a six-ply silk brocade incorporating gold and silver threads, much in vogue during the Middle Ages, but let us not be deflected.
Further Pavlova
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Other critics cite stock characterization, weak plots, and contrived endings.
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Scotland contrived to manage what eight different nations had failed signally to do in Cardiff yesterday - they lost to Wales.
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Their sudden outburst was obviously genuine; it couldn't have been contrived.
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_Plackett_, a tool contrived as a kind of trowel for smoothing and shaping the clay.
The Forest of Dean An Historical and Descriptive Account
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These need not all be loud or lengthy, but rather should ebb and flow with apparent uncontrived ease.
Times, Sunday Times
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The actors enter and exit through an archway at the rear of the stage, reminding the audience of the deliberately contrived nature of the play.
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We are breaking free from our completely contrived preconception of how things ought to be.
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Depending on your mood, you'll enjoy it as a sobbing tearjerker or loathe its sugary, contrived and maudlin morality laid on with a trowel.
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Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business.
Life's Handicap
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If it were preposterous nonsense to say that electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a little bracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavity of the eye to any such cause.
Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity
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Where there is a gentleman in the family, a dogcart is the most convenient vehicle which can be kept; but as that would not be suitable for a lady, we contrived to make the back seat of the carriage do duty for the well of the dog-cart, and it was astonishing how many light packages we managed to "stow away" in it.
Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it
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Cassady's situation has the ironies of a contrived novelistic denouement.
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Amusing at points, but overwrought and contrived for the most part
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The guinea-pig has teeth which are shed before it is born, and hence can never subserve the masticatory purpose for which they seem contrived, and, in like manner, the female dugong has tusks which never cut the gum.
Essays
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The whole thing's coated with a sugary Gen X slackerness that, for probably the first time in five years, doesn't seem silly or contrived.
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It was obviously unrehearsed, but in its own way it sounded as contrived as his announcement a couple of days earlier of his marriage proposal to the unfortunate Ms Holmes on the Eiffel Tower.
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Their actions land them in one situation after another that manages to be contrived and clichéd at the same time.
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In restaurants, as in theater, patrons pay for a lush, contrived setting replete with stagey scenery and sophisticated lighting techniques.
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Hence British colonial elites contrived ways in which they could permanently consolidate power among themselves by establishing a collaborative intercolonial discourse with Indian indigenous elite (religious leaders, property owners, traders, and other community leaders).
Radovan Karadzic's website and blog
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It all comes about as deliberately, if unconsciously, contrived.
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The old banksman was forbidden to send for a doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
A Son of Hagar A Romance of Our Time
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And the cautiously optimistic ending is rather too quickly and conveniently contrived.
Times, Sunday Times
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The use of the word "ergonomic" to describe that lazily contrived squarish combination of fabrics with one inch unpadded shoulder cutting straps upsets me.
Beaching and Moaning: Non-necessity is the Mother of Reinvention
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Helpless beyond measure in all the duties of practical statesmanship, its members or their dependants have given proof of remarkable energy in the single department of peculation; and there, not content with the slow methods of the old-fashioned defaulter, who helped himself only to what there was, they have contrived to steal what there was going to be, and have peculated in advance by a kind of official post-obit.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861
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He puts on a spectacle so that the guests presume "the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry."
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A felibote (Spanish) or flibot (French) or “flyboat,” in one of its early meanings, was, as defined by R. M. Nance, “an enlarged, ship-rigged barge, contrived to carry as much merchandise as possible with the smallest possible crew.”
Champlain's Dream
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It is slick, contrived and eminently forgettable guff.
Times, Sunday Times
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The film is modestly and precisely made, but combatively, with genuine and not contrived feeling.