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Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English - Cite This Source - Share This
Main Entry:  banal1
Part of Speech:  adj
Definition:  commonplace; tired or petty
Etymology:  Serbo-Croatian ban 'lord, ruler'

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7)
Copyright © 2003-2008 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
banal

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Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English - Cite This Source - Share This
Main Entry:  banal2
Part of Speech:  adj
Definition:  pertaining to compulsory feudal service
Etymology:  Serbo-Croatian ban 'lord, ruler'

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7)
Copyright © 2003-2008 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English - Cite This Source - Share This
Main Entry:  banal3
Part of Speech:  adj
Definition:  pertaining to a lord or ruler (banat) in Hungary, Croatia, and thereabouts
Etymology:  Serbo-Croatian ban 'lord, ruler'

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7)
Copyright © 2003-2008 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
ba·nal    Audio Help   [buh-nal, -nahl, beyn-l] Pronunciation Key
–adjective
devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite: a banal and sophomoric treatment of courage on the frontier.

[Origin: 1745–55; < F; OF: pertaining to a ban (see ban2, -al1)]

ba·nal·i·ty    Audio Help   [buh-nal-i-tee, bey-] Pronunciation Key, noun
ba·nal·ly, adverb

See commonplace.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
ba·nal    Audio Help   (bə-nāl', bā'nəl, bə-näl')  Pronunciation Key 
adj.   Drearily commonplace and often predictable; trite: "Blunt language cannot hide a banal conception" (James Wolcott).


[French, from Old French, shared by tenants in a feudal jurisdiction, from ban, summons to military service, of Germanic origin; see bhā-2 in Indo-European roots.]

ba·nal'ize' v., ba·nal'ly adv.
Usage Note: The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (bān'əl, rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: no member of the Usage Panel prefers this pronunciation. In our 2001 survey, (bənāl') is preferred by 58 percent of the Usage Panel, (bā'nəl) by 28 percent, and (bə-näl') by 13 percent (this pronunciation is more common in British English). Some Panelists admit to being so vexed by the problem that they tend to avoid the word in conversation. Speakers can perhaps take comfort in knowing that these three pronunciations each have the support of at least some of the Usage Panel and that none of them is incorrect. When several pronunciations of a word are widely used, there is really no right or wrong one.

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
banal 
"trite, commonplace," 1840, from Fr. banal, adj. form of ban "decree, legal control" (see ban (v.)). Originally designating things like ovens or mills that belonged to feudal serfs, or else compulsory military service; in either case generalized through "open to everyone" to "commonplace, ordinary," to "trite, petty."

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This
banal

adjective
repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse; "bromidic sermons"; "his remarks were trite and commonplace"; "hackneyed phrases"; "a stock answer"; "repeating threadbare jokes"; "parroting some timeworn axiom"; "the trite metaphor 'hard as nails'" 

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

Banal

Ban"al\, a. [F., fr. ban an ordinance.] Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
Dictionary.com Word of the Day Archive - Cite This Source - Share This

banal

banal was Word of the Day on September 30, 1999.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
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