Such [books] as are mere pieces of formality, so
that if you look on them, you look though them.
--Fuller.
3. Compliance with formal or conventional rules; ceremony;
conventionality.
Nor was his attendance on divine offices a matter of
formality and custom, but of conscience.
--Atterbury.
4. An established order; conventional rule of procedure;
usual method; habitual mode.
He was installed with all the usual formalities.
--C.
Middleton.
5. pl. The dress prescribed for any body of men, academical,
municipal, or sacerdotal. [Obs.]
The doctors attending her in their formalities as
far as Shotover. --Fuller.
6. That which is formal; the formal part.
It unties the inward knot of marriage, . . . while
it aims to keep fast the outward formality.
--Milton.
7. The quality which makes a thing what it is; essence.
The material part of the evil came from our father
upon us, but the formality of it, the sting and the
curse, is only by ourselves. --Jer. Taylor.
The formality of the vow lies in the promise made to
God. --Bp.
Stillingfleet.
8. (Scholastic. Philos.) The manner in which a thing is
conceived or constituted by an act of human thinking; the
result of such an act; as, animality and rationality are
formalities.