The phrase "conventional meaning" is correct and can be used in written English.
It typically refers to the standard or commonly accepted meaning of a word or phrase. Example: The word "run" has a conventional meaning of moving at a fast pace using your legs. However, it can also have a figurative meaning in the context of a race or competition.
Among these are natural meaning, as in smoke means fire or those spots mean measles; conventional meaning, as in a red traffic light means stop or the skull and crossbones means danger; and intentional meaning, as in John means well or Frank means business.
These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses.
In "Nudge", the 2008 book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler that brought the Orwellian terminology of "libertarian paternalism" to a popular audience, "libertarian" was used, sensibly enough, to mean "choice-preserving" and "paternalism" was used with such flagrant disregard of conventional meaning that it was made to include everything that might help anyone ever make a good decision.
In "Jabberwocky," conventional meaning rushes out, and has to be restored by Humpty Dumpty's explanations.
The term and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with invidious intent.
Thick with knotty words and bizarre juxtapositions, these poems dissolve syntax and estrange language from conventional meaning.
The illocutionary force of a particular speech act depends on a variety of factors, including the intentions of the speaker and the background conventions that link the conventional meanings of words with social practices.
Instantiations of (G2) will model (i), (v), and (vi), and serve as a reminder that the descriptive meaning of ethical language may be merely suggested by the use of ethical sentences, rather than a part of their conventional meanings.
These considerations suggest that indirect speech acts, if they do occur at all, can be explained within the framework of conversational implicature that process by which we mean more (and on some occasions less) than we say, but in a way not due exclusively to the conventional meanings of our words.
Then the structure of the protoplanet can be given by the following set of equations: The equation of hydrostatic equilibrium, (1) The equation of conservation of mass, (2) The equation of convective heat flux, (3) The gas law, (4) Here all symbols have conventional meanings.
If it is judged by conventional standards, meaning by the importance of its collection of European and American paintings, it barely reaches the second rank of museums in the United States.
