commonplace

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See also: common-place and common place

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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A calque of Latin locus commūnis, referring to a generally applicable literary passage, itself a calque of Ancient Greek κοινὸς τόπος (koinòs tópos).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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commonplace (comparative more commonplace, superlative most commonplace)

  1. Ordinary; not having any remarkable characteristics.
    Synonyms: routine, undistinguished, unexceptional, quotidian; see also Thesaurus:hackneyed
    Antonyms: distinguished, inimitable, unique
    • 1824, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 7, in St. Ronan's Well:
      "This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."
    • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
      In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned.
    • 1911, Joseph Conrad, chapter 1, in Under Western Eyes:
      I could get hold of nothing but of some commonplace phrases, those futile phrases that give the measure of our impotence before each other's trials.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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commonplace (plural commonplaces)

  1. A platitude or cliché.
    • 1899, Stephen Crane, chapter 17, in Active Service:
      Finally he began to mutter some commonplaces which meant nothing particularly.
    • 1910, Elinor Glyn, chapter 4, in His Hour:
      And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
  2. Something that is ordinary; something commonly done or occurring.
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 137:
      It is odd how easily the common-places of morality or of sentiment glide off in conversation. Well, they are "exceedingly helpful," and so Lord Avonleigh found them.
    • 1891 [September, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Adventure III.—A Case of Identity.”, in Geo[rge] Newnes, editor, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume II (July to December), number [9], London: […], page 248, column 1:
      "MY dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker-street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. […]"
    • 1988 December 19, William Styron, “Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN:
      The smallest commonplace of domestic life, so amiable to the healthy mind, lacerates like a blade.
    • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 4:
      Collecting data via transects is a commonplace in biology[.]
  3. A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.
  4. A commonplace book.

Translations

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Verb

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commonplace (third-person singular simple present commonplaces, present participle commonplacing, simple past and past participle commonplaced)

  1. To make a commonplace book.
  2. To enter in a commonplace book, or to reduce to general heads.
    • 1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics:
      I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing an universal history from the […] historians.
  3. (obsolete) To utter commonplaces; to indulge in platitudes.
    • 1910, Elinor Glyn, chapter 4, in His Hour:
      And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
    • c. January 1620, Francis Bacon, letter to the King
      For the good that comes of particular and select committees and commissions, I need not commonplace.
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