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Form without substance. Such [books] as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look though them. Fuller.

The state of being informal; want of regular, prescribed, or customary form; as, the informality of legal proceedings.

Formality; lack of warmth.

d of, to seize roughly or quickly. -- To clap up. (a) To imprison hastily or without due formality. (b) To make or contrive hastily. [Obs.] "Was ever match clapped up so suddenly" Shak.

To take a degree at a university. [Eng.] I question whether the formality of commencing was used in that age. Fuller.

or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty. Observances of time, place, and of decency in general. Burke. Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of sense.…

The rank or condition of a dowager; formality, as that of a dowager. Also used figuratively. Mansions that have passed away into dowagerism. Thackeray.

Freedom from constraint, formality, difficulty, embarrassment, etc.; facility; liberty; naturalness; -- said of manner, style, etc.; as, ease of style, of behavior, of address. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. Pope. Whate'er he did was done with so much ease, In him alone 't was natural to please. Dryde…

Freedom from effort, constraint, or formality; -- said of style, manner, etc. With painful care, but seeming easiness. Roscommon.

he like; not anxious; tranquil; as, an easy mind. (c) Free from constraint, harshness, or formality; unconstrained; smooth; as, easy manners; an easy style. "The easy vigor of a line." Pope.

dislike; disagreeable; prohibiting or interdicting; as, a forbidding aspect; a forbidding formality; a forbidding air.

nce; empty, outside appearance; vain, trivial, or conventional ceremony; conventionality; formality; as, a matter of mere form. Though well we may not pass upon his life Without the form of justice. Shak.

To affect formality. [Obs.] ales.

r, animation, vivacity, etc.; coldness of affection or of manner; dullness; stiffness and formality; as, frigidity of a reception, of a bow, etc.

To cause to begin, esp. with formality or solemn ceremony; hence, to set in motion, action, or progress; to initiate; -- used especially of something of dignity or worth or public concern; as, to inaugurate a new era of things, new methods, etc. As if kings did closes remarkable days to inaugurate their favors. Sir H.…

The quality or state of being prim; affected formality or niceness; preciseness; stiffness.

Pertaining to, or characterized by, official formality. See Red tape, under Red, a.

The method or subtitles the schools of philosophy; scholastic formality; scholastic doctrines or philosophy. The spirit of the old scholasticism . . . spurned laborious investigation and slow induction. J. P. Smith.

The quality or state of being set; formality; obstinacy. "The starched setness of a sententious writer." R. Masters.

pecially in speaking to elders or superiors; sometimes, also, used in the way of emphatic formality. "What's that to you, sir" Sheridan.