Make Your Point: CONTRIVED

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pronounce CONTRIVED:

kun TRIVED

connect this word to others:

In both meaning and etymology, our word contrived is closely related to tro__, which means "a figure of speech, or any idea that gets reused a lot in fiction or in real life." Can you recall that one?

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definition:

"Contrive" traces back through Old French to a Latin word, contropare, which meant "to compare (by using a figure of speech)." Contropare has bits that literally mean "with a song, or with a figure of speech:" com-, "with," and tropus, "song or figure of speech."

We've used "contrive" in English since the 1300s, first to mean "to create, to invent: to devise in some clever, creative, or ingenious way." But over time, probably because plans that are brilliant and complicated can often be evil or treacherous, "contrive" took on a negative vibe.

Today, to contrive things, or to contrive to do things, is to plot them, to plan them out, to devise some scheme to make them happen.

Contrived things, then, seem faked, plotted, planned, or manipulatively devised, instead of being real, genuine, or sincere.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Past participle adjective: "MrBeast's image is contrived;" "MrBeast's videos are contrived to keep viewers watching."

Other forms:

The verb is "contrive," and it's the transitive kind: "MrBeast contrived a leap from YouTube to Amazon Prime."

The noun is "contrivance," and it's countable, as in "He relies on contrivances to keep viewers from clicking away."

how to use it:

When you want to complain about something fake, phony, and staged, and you want a word that's formal and slightly snobby, pick "contrived."

When you're talking about art or fiction, you might might complain about contrived songs, musics, albums; plots, plot twists, plot developments, conflicts, or entire stories.

You might complain about contrived performances on stage, on film, or in real life.

And you might complain about real-life contrived announcements, speeches, posts, feuds, publicity stunts, interviews, comments, accusations and so on.

Although "contrived" is generally an insult, on rare occasions, it still means "clever, brilliant, artistic." Here's an example from Kenneth Womack: "[George Harrison] contrived a series of guitar embellishments that elevated the Beatles' music at every turn."

examples:

"Though everyone understands 'The Bachelor' is contrived, there are 'Bachelor' winners who have been married for more than a decade. At some point, reality TV becomes reality."
— Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, 8 November 2017

"In 2019, Google reported that its quantum computer had solved a problem faster than the best existing supercomputers, but it was a contrived task with no practical application."
— Sohia Chen, The Verge, 11 June 2021

"He is average-sized and prematurely gray, but by some contrivance of carriage and posture, he makes the men who stand before him feel smaller."
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014

has this page helped you understand "contrived"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "contrived" without saying "phony" or "elaborate."

try it out:

Though it's insulting, "contrived" is such a fun adjective. You can just call things contrived, full stop, or call them contrived to do something: contrived to make money, contrived to waste time, contrived to create a fear of missing out.

For example, the packaging on beauty products is contrived to make you impulse-buy it, or even contrived to make you feel ugly until you buy it.

For another example, a reviewer pointed out that a Dave Ramsey book about personal finance had so much repetition and such a large font size that these features seemed "contrived to fill space."

With these examples in mind, talk about something else that's contrived. And what is it contrived to do?

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is "Literally That."

I’ll give you a gif and several synonyms that describe it, and you figure out which of these synonyms is most literally illustrated in the gif. You can check out some examples here.

Try this one today:

(Source)

A. brio
B. charisma
C. panache

To see the answer, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. Opposites of CONTRIVED include

A. BITTER and JADED.
B. UNIQUE and NUANCED.
C. AUTHENTIC and UNCHOREOGRAPHED.

2. "Contrived" doesn't always have to mean "manipulated." Sometimes it just means "_____," as in this example from Salon: "The pandemic closed his school and sent students and teachers into a hastily contrived online learning mode."

A. chosen, selected
B. funded, made financially possible
C. planned, assembled, tossed together

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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