"Not this time," John Mayrant said. "I wish to show our relics to this gentleman myself--if he will permit me?" This last was a question put to me with a courteous formality, a formality which a few minutes more were to see smashed to smithereens.英文原著 · 《Lady Baltimore》
Coleman did not seem to mind the professor's formality. " Don't fear anything. Won't you sit down again? Will you have a cigar. * * No, I couldn't tell you how glad I am. How glad I am. I feel like a fool.英文原著 · 《Active Service》
All of them, indeed, are not equally fine. Irving's 'Mathias' and 'Louis XI,' are higher performances than his 'Shylock' and 'Dorincourt,' higher in imaginative tone and in adequacy of feeling and treatment. But, throughout all these forms, the drift of his spirit, setting boldly away from conventions and formalities, has been manifested with delightful results. He has always seemed to be alive with the specific vitality of the person represented. He has never seemed a wooden puppet of the stage, bound in by formality and straining after a vague scholastic ideal of technical correctness."英文原著 · 《Autobiographies》
Then in the afternoon Mrs. Merriman and Mrs. Highcamp had made their "party call." Edna felt that they might have dispensed with the formality. They had also come to invite her to play vingt-et-un one evening at Mrs. Merriman's. She was asked to go early, to dinner, and Mr. Merriman or Mr. Arobin would take her home.英文原著 · 《Awakening & Selected Short Stories》
He did?" Marian's voice puzzled Bud. She kneaded the bread vigorously for a minute. "Don't depend too much on Pop. He's--variable. And don't go around with a dollar in your pocket--unless you don't mind losing that dollar. There are men in this country who would willingly dispense with the formality of racing a horse in order to get your money."英文原著 · 《Cow-Country》
Hanson guessed shrewdly. The cashier of the Crater County Bank was doing exactly what she said he would be doing. He was sitting in the kitchen, rocking a pink baby wrapped in white outing flannel with blue border, when Mrs. Hanson, without the formality of more than one warning tap on the screen door, walked in with Bud. She held out her hands for the baby while she introduced the cashier to Bud. In the next breath she was explaining what was wanted of the bank.英文原著 · 《Cow-Country》
They just need you to do a screen test. It's basically a formality.美剧 · 《Bojack Horseman》
- He's had a letter giving notice. - Oh, it may be a formality.美剧 · 《Downton Abbey》
That way, we don't have to go through the formality of actually playing.美剧 · 《Friends》