mannered
- 1Having good manners, or, more frequently, displaying excessive and affected mannerisms in behavior, speech, or style.
Like prose so polished that it shows off its own style instead of saying anything.
Her speech was so mannered that it sounded almost rehearsed.
Audiences found the actor's mannered performance hard to take seriously.
Similaraffected, artificial, stilted, contrived, pretentious
Oppositenatural, unaffected, spontaneous
Note
Where it stands decides what it means. Inside a compound it is neutral and simply grades conduct, as in ill-mannered. Standing alone it usually turns critical: a mannered voice or performance is one whose style looks put on. A neutral standalone use survives too. Richard W. Kaeuper (2000) calls Romeo and Juliet's world "a highly mannered, highly violent society," meaning one bound by elaborate codes of conduct.
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Origin
From Middle English manered, equivalent to manner plus the suffix -ed.