# commonplace
## English
### Alternative forms

* common place (obsolete)
* common-place (archaic)

### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* (General American) IPA: /ˈkɑmənˌpleɪs/
* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɒmənˌpleɪs/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Audio (UK):(file)
* Hyphenation: com‧mon‧place

### Adjective

commonplace (comparative more commonplace, superlative most commonplace)
* 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

* commonplaceism
* commonplacely
* commonplaceness
* commonplacer
* uncommonplace

#### Translations
### Noun

commonplace (plural commonplaces)
* 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.
* 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. […]"
** 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 150:And, placed discreetly among these commonplaces, a few pieces of genuine quality, bizarrely distinguished by craftsmanship from the vulgar products of the machine.
** 1988 December 19, William Styron, “Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died”, in The New York Times‎, →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[.]
* A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.
** 1710, Jonathan Swift, A Discourse concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit:Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of common-place.
* A commonplace book.

#### Translations
### Verb

commonplace (third-person singular simple present commonplaces, present participle commonplacing, simple past and past participle commonplaced)
* To make a commonplace book.
* 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.
* (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.

### Related terms

* commonplace book