garden-variety

[ gahr-dn-vuh-rahy-i-tee ]
See synonyms for garden-variety on Thesaurus.com
adjective
  1. common, usual, or ordinary; unexceptional.

Origin of garden-variety

1
First recorded in 1925–30

Words Nearby garden-variety

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use garden-variety in a sentence

  • I do not mean to imply that stories of the stork and cabbage-garden variety are to be altogether excluded.

  • I am that garden variety, and it took the exercising of many heart interests to toughen my cardiac organ.

    The Golden Bird | Maria Thompson Daviess
  • It was plain the kitten had never known anything of home or a fireside and was simply of the humble garden variety of cat.

    The Great Small Cat and Others | May E. Southworth
  • Such points gave him an air of distinction, and marked him out as quite different from the common or garden variety of cats.

    The Story Girl | Lucy Maud Montgomery
  • It somewhat resembles the Yellow Malta, and is a good garden variety.

Other Idioms and Phrases with garden-variety

garden-variety

Ordinary, common, as in I don't want anything special in a VCR—the garden variety will do. This term alludes to a common plant as opposed to a specially bred hybrid. [Colloquial; 1920]

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.