“Affectation (noun): Mannered or unnatural speech or writing, or adoption of a style unsuitable to the style or occasion; a stylistic artifice or mannerism.
‘…nor is there in the hall any affectation of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric which reminds you of a broken-winded barrel-organ playing a che la morte, bad enough in prose, but when set up in blank verse awful and shocking in its more than natural deformity….’ George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Mark's Text Terminal 