conform

Verb

1. To adapt to something by more closely matching it, especially something normative.
   • There is a worm by Phoebus bred, By leaves of mulberry is fed, Which unprovided where to dwell, Conforms itself to weave a cell. - c. 1710, “Vanbrugh's House”, in The Poems of Jonathan Swift, 1910 edition, Jonathan...
   • The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. - 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, chapter 6, in Nature:
   • When Nos. 1870 to 1879 emerged, in 1902, the circular front windows of the cab had given place to much larger windows, conforming to the shape of the cab roof on top and the firebox top below, [...]. - 1961 February,...

   1. (transitive, intransitive, often followed by to) To change to more closely match typical characteristics or behavior.

      • [H]e had a dispensation for conforming in outward observances to the Protestant faith. - 1822, [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Peveril of the Peak. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst,...
      • [B]y conforming to the dress and habits of the Gauchos, he has obtained an unbounded popularity in the country. - 1839, Robert FitzRoy, Phillip Parker King, Charles Darwin, chapter IV, in Narrative of the Surveying...
      • In any case, most of these sharks are gray or grayish, and they certainly are typical in that they conform to everyone's idea of what a shark is supposed to look like. - 1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf,...
2. To be as required or recommended by a specification, regulation, or policy.
   • In height and breadth it conformed to the prescribed measurements laid down by the rules of the contest. - 1919, Hildegard G. Frey, chapter 11, in The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit:
   • A judge in a Texas widow’s lawsuit over the Merck drug Vioxx reduced a $32 million jury award to about $7.75 million on Thursday so that it conformed to state law. […] But Judge Alex W. Gabert, in a Rio Grande City...