Word.ws English Dictionary

formalesque

formalesque adjective: modernist; of the artistic style of the period from around 1890 to 1960.

Adjective

formalesque (not comparable)

  1. modernist; of the artistic style of the period from around 1890 to 1960

Origin of formalesque

From formal + -esque; coined in 1994 by Australian art historian Bernard Smith, since the period referred to by "modernist" was by then no longer modern.

Questions about formalesque

What does formalesque mean?
Formalesque means modernist; of the artistic style of the period from around 1890 to 1960.
What part of speech is formalesque?
Formalesque is an adjective.

Words near formalesque in the dictionary

  1. formaldehydesulphoxylate
  2. formaldehydesulphoxylates
  3. formaldehydogenic
  4. formaldoxime
  5. formalese
  6. formalesque
  7. formalin
  8. formaline
  9. formalines
  10. formalinise
  11. formalinised

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: formalesque (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “formalesque.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/formalesque. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.