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commonplace

[kom-uhn-pleys]

Example Sentences Origin

adjective

ordinary; undistinguished or uninteresting; without individuality: a commonplace person.

trite; hackneyed; platitudinous: a commonplace remark.

noun

a well-known, customary, or obvious remark; a trite or uninteresting saying.

anything common, ordinary, or uninteresting.

Archaic. a place or passage in a book or writing noted as important for reference or quotation.

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Commonplace is always a great word to know.

So is quincunx. Does it mean:

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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Origin:
1525–35; translation of Latin locus commūnis, itself translation of Greek koinòs tópos

Related forms

com·mon·place·ly, adverb

com·mon·place·ness, noun

un·com·mon·place, adjective

Synonyms
2. Commonplace, banal, hackneyed, stereotyped, trite describe words, remarks, and styles of expression that are lifeless and uninteresting. Commonplace characterizes thought that is dull, ordinary, and platitudinous: commonplace and boring. Something is banal that seems inane, insipid, and pointless: a heavy-handed and banal affirmation of the obvious. Hackneyed characterizes something that seems stale and worn out through overuse: a hackneyed comparison. Stereotyped emphasizes the fact that situations felt to be similar invariably call for the same thought in exactly the same form and the same words: so stereotyped as to seem automatic. Trite describes something that was originally striking and apt, but which has become so well-known and been so commonly used that all interest has been worn out of it: true but trite. 3. cliché, bromide, platitude, stereotype.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To commonplace

Example Sentences

The unlikely is commonplace in television movies and dramas.

Such economic and civic engagement would be commonplace at land-grant universities and engineering schools.

Performance-related pay is the norm, and redundancy commonplace.

EXPAND

The unlikely is commonplace in television movies and dramas.

Such economic and civic engagement would be commonplace at land-grant universities and engineering schools.

Performance-related pay is the norm, and redundancy commonplace.

They're breakable, contain toxic material, and are becoming increasingly commonplace.

Small particles are commonplace in industrial processes, and charging is a perennial problem.

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.

While buses with wheelchair lifts on their back doors are becoming commonplace in municipal.

What was once unusual has become increasingly commonplace.

The head teacher and her staff find it commonplace too-and no wonder.

Fighting over mating and any food the pack finds is commonplace.

Diseases such as asthma should be incredibly uncommon, yet are disturbingly commonplace these days.

Whilst deaths are commonplace in a genre filled with space.

Four of the plays are as literal as they are commonplace.

Most of the students in our department are international, and gifts are commonplace.

In utilities, too, convergence has become commonplace.

Perhaps he omitted walls because they were commonplace.

Nanomedicines, advocates say, will one day be commonplace.

IT is a commonplace of anthropology that every culture has its own set of standards defining beauty.

But as colleges and universities try to streamline the hiring process, phone interviews are commonplace.

What was once an extraordinary event will have become commonplace.

Efforts to quantify the economic value of research have become commonplace.

It's become commonplace for new social websites to.

He takes the poet's or the novelist's joy in turning a commonplace detail to the angle at which it reveals its glint of meaning.

Similarly, in music, sampling-entire tracks constructed from other tracks-has become commonplace.

It shows on how commonplace and unpromising a foundation.

Sounds familiar, as if it was commonplace in the high-tech industry.

Best of all, you can build one yourself from cheap, commonplace components.

They add elegance and luxury to otherwise commonplace dishes as almost no other ingredient can.

The evidence is all around us, so commonplace that sometimes only visitors from abroad can see it.

Heatwaves that now set records will become commonplace.

Atoms are now such a commonplace idea that it is hard to remember how radical they used to seem.

The gadgets, which cost millions of dollars and are the next best thing to actually driving a circuit, are now commonplace in.

As soon as it begins to attend to its epic concerns, the film itself becomes commonplace.

The point of the study was to show that false positives are commonplace in neuroimaging research.

Masterpieces are commonplace in this show and rarities are not scarce.

In poor countries, the sale of counterfeit drugs is commonplace.

Enter an age where magic is commonplace and airships fill the skies, crowding out the heavens.

Her powers of observation are acute and she can make the commonplace unimaginable.

Rationing, long queues, bad tempers and violence have become commonplace at filling stations.

The thing that kills me here is how clunky, commonplace and garage-centric this video is.

Atrocities of all kinds are commonplace on the plantation.

The sequencing of new genomes is now becoming so commonplace that in one sense it scarcely merits reporting.

With increasing numbers of people buying digital cameras, image-manipulation software is becoming more commonplace.

The video cameras record fights, back talk and vandalism that are now commonplace on bus trips to and from school.

The gooey substance produced by mixing cornstarch with a little water is a commonplace example of such a material.

Color laser printers have been commonplace in offices for years now.

Shootings are so commonplace that they are the subject of local songs and school essay contests.

Four-day working weeks have become commonplace in power-starved provinces.

Of course, answering machines weren't commonplace until the mid- to late-1980s.

Links between universities and industry are commonplace.

If you have enough data about commonplace conversations, you can even predict when those conversations are going to take place.

The political donations were legal, and commonplace for big business.

The student's attorneys argued that in the evolving media climate, freelance journalists are becoming commonplace.

IT is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

But their two heads together created what is now commonplace in guitar-building.

He and his wife and children still live in a commonplace apartment that costs a third of a luxury one.

If that makes me commonplace or weird anyother word than so be it.

It's commonplace now for people to take pre-existing media, recontextualize it and show it to the world.

Though commonplace today, the technique was not widely used at the time.

The advent of retail genomics will make a once-rare experience commonplace.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

commonplace (ˈkɒmənˌpleɪs)

—*adj*
1.	ordinary; everyday: commonplace duties
2.	dull and obvious; trite: commonplace prose

—n
3.	something dull and trite, esp a remark; platitude; truism
4.	a passage in a book marked for inclusion in a commonplace book, etc
5.	an ordinary or common thing

[C16: translation of Latin locus commūnis argument of wide application, translation of Greek koinos topos]

'commonplaceness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

commonplace

1549, "a statement generally accepted," lit. translation of L. locus communis, from Gk. koinos topos "general topic." The adj. sense of "having nothing original" dates from 1609.

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