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

Recent Examples on the Web

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

Gaines the younger had more than laughs and frights on his mind, however; woven into EC Comics were progressive ideals around racial equality, pacifism, environmentalism and the existential nuclear-age dread rarely spoken of in the placid, conformist 1950s. —Patrick Sauer, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Sep. 2024

Yes, Russian society is in a state of conformist apathy, justifying the war to itself by borrowing words given to the public by the authorities; the political opposition is in exile, in jail, or dead. —Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 17 May 2024

Word History

First Known Use

Noun

1651, in the meaning defined above

Adjective

1677, in the meaning defined above