conventional wisdom
nounDefinition of conventional wisdom
: the generally accepted belief, opinion, judgment, or prediction about a particular matter
Examples of conventional wisdom in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The conventional wisdom is that Bush 41 was the wiser leader for not having gone to Baghdad. — WSJ, "George Herbert Walker Bush," 1 Dec. 2018 The conventional wisdom was that Tester was one of the safest of the deep red state Senate Democrats on the ballot (though some believed the race was tightening in the closing weeks). — Andrew Prokop, Vox, "Jon Tester reelected to US Senate, holding on to Montana seat for Democrats," 7 Nov. 2018 Be open to change within your organizations and constantly rethink conventional wisdom. — miamiherald, "Leigh-Ann Buchanan," 30 June 2018 That seems, um, a little contrary to the conventional wisdom. — John Sides, Washington Post, "Why the U.S. tax system is so complicated — but Americans are proud to pay taxes anyway," 12 Apr. 2018 In most of the cases, the incidents ran contrary to the conventional wisdom offered to tourists by travel agents selling trips to Mexico: Just stay on the resort and in the tourist areas. — Raquel Rutledge, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Travel agents and popular sites didn’t share the risks with those booking travel to Mexico resorts," 11 Apr. 2018 The conventional wisdom settled in that Manchin was one of the safest Trump country Democrats. — Andrew Prokop, Vox, "Joe Manchin reelected in West Virginia: the most conservative Senate Democrat survives," 7 Nov. 2018 The conventional wisdom held that brick-and-mortar retail was ailing. — Patrick Sisson, Curbed, "Amazon is coming for the small corner store," 2 Oct. 2018 Writing these four symphonies may not have been able to remove a composer's day-to-day mental anguish, but Dudamel's coherently searing performances revealed, against hard-to-break conventional wisdom, Schumann's great triumph of music over mind. — Mark Swed, latimes.com, "Dudamel untangles the strangeness of Schumann's symphonies," 29 May 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'conventional wisdom.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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