Commonplace vs Average - What's the difference?
commonplace | average | Related terms |
Ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics.
* 1824 , Sir (Walter Scott), , ch. 7:
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1
, passage=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 , (w), (Under Western Eyes) , ch. 1:
A platitude or .
* 1899 , , Active Service , ch. 17:
* 1910 , , His Hour , ch. 4:
Something that is ordinary.
* 1891 , , "A Case of Identity" in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes :
A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.
* Jonathan Swift
A commonplace book.
To make a commonplace book.
To enter in a commonplace book, or to reduce to general heads.
* Felton
(obsolete) To utter commonplaces; to indulge in platitudes.
* 1910 , , His Hour , ch. 4:
(legal, marine) Financial loss due to damage to transported goods; compensation for damage or loss.
* 2008 , Filiberto Agusti, Beverley Earle, Richard Schaffer, Filiberto Agusti, Beverley Earle, International Business Law and Its Environment ,
Customs duty or similar charge payable on transported goods.
Proportional or equitable distribution of financial expense.
(mathematics) The arithmetic mean.
* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty
, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist)
(statistics) Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode.
(sports) An indication of a player's ability calculated from his scoring record, etc.
(UK, legal, obsolete) The service that a tenant owed his lord, to be done by the animals of the tenant, such as the transportation of wheat, turf, etc.
(UK, in the plural) In the corn trade, the medial price of the several kinds of grain in the principal corn markets.
(not comparable) Constituting or relating to the average.
Neither very good nor very bad; rated somewhere in the middle of all others in the same category.
Typical.
* 2002 , Andy Turnbull, The Synthetic Beast: When Corporations Come to Life ,
* 2004 , Deirdre V. Lovecky, Different Minds: Gifted Children with AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits ,
* '2009'', Susan T. Fiske, ''Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology ,
(informal) Not outstanding, not good, banal; bad or poor.
* 2002 , Andy Slaven, Video Game Bible, 1985-2002 ,
* 2005 , Brad Knight, Laci Peterson: The Whole Story: Laci, Scott, and Amber's Deadly Love Triangle ,
* 2009 , Carn Tiernan, On the Back of the Other Side ,
(informal) To compute the arithmetic mean of.
Over a period of time or across members of a population, to have or generate a mean value of.
To divide among a number, according to a given proportion.
To be, generally or on average.
* 1872 Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds
Commonplace is a related term of average.
As adjectives the difference between commonplace and average
is that commonplace is ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics while average is (not comparable) constituting or relating to the average.As nouns the difference between commonplace and average
is that commonplace is a platitude or while average is (legal|marine) financial loss due to damage to transported goods; compensation for damage or loss.As verbs the difference between commonplace and average
is that commonplace is to make a commonplace book while average is (informal) to compute the arithmetic mean of.commonplace
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- "This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."
- 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.
Synonyms
* routine * undistinguished * unexceptional * See alsoAntonyms
* distinguished * inimitable * uniqueNoun
(en noun)- Finally he began to mutter some commonplaces which meant nothing particularly.
- And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
- "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."
- Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace .
Verb
(commonplac)- I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing an universal history from the historians.
- And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
- (Francis Bacon)
average
English
(wikipedia average)Noun
(en noun)page 219,
- Historically, the courts have allowed a general average' claim only where the loss occurred as a result of the ship being in immediate peril.The court awarded the carrier the general '''average''' claim. It noted that “a ship?s master should not be discouraged from taking timely action to avert a disaster,” and need not be in actual peril to claim general ' average .
citation, passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}
- The average of 10, 20 and 24 is (10 + 20 + 24)/3 = 18.
Usage notes
* (sense) The term average' may refer to the statistical mean, median or mode of a batch, sample, or distribution, or sometimes any other measure of central tendency. Statisticians and responsible news sources are careful to use whichever of these specific terms is appropriate. In common usage, ' average refers to the arithmetic mean. It is, however, a common rhetorical trick to call the most favorable of mean, median and mode the "average" depending on the interpretation of a set of figures that the speaker or writer wants to promote.Coordinate terms
* (measure of central tendency) arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, mean, median, modeDerived terms
* above average * average atomic mass * averager * batting average * below average * bowling average * earned run average * general average * grade point average * height above average terrain * law of averages * moving average * on average * particular average * rolling average * slugging average * subaverage * time average * weighted average * weighted-average cost of capitalAdjective
(en adjective)- The average age of the participants was 18.5.
- I soon found I was only an average chess player.
page 12,
- We tend to think that exceptionally attractive men and women are outstanding but the fact is that they are more average than most.
page 75,
- Things that never would occur to more average children, with and without AD/HD, will give these children nightmares.
page 73,
- In other words, highly attractive people like highly attractive communicators and more average' people like more ' average communicators.
- The average family will not need the more expensive features of this product.
page 228,
- The graphics, sound, and most everything else are all very average . However, the main thing that brings this game down are the controls - they feel very clumsy and awkward at times.
page 308,
- But what the vast majority of the populace doesn?t realise is the fact that he?s only on TV because he became famous from one case, Winona Ryder's, which, by the way, he lost because he?s only a very average attorney.
page 62,
- In the piano stool there was a stack of music, mostly sentimental ballads intended to be sung by people with very average voices accompanied by not very competent pianists.
Synonyms
* (constituting or relating to the average) mean; expectation (colloquial) * (neither very good nor very bad) mediocre, medium, middle-ranking, middling, unremarkable, so-so, * (typical) conventional, normal, regular, standard, typical, usual, bog-standard (slang) * ordinary, uninspiringAntonyms
* (neither very good nor very bad) extraordinaryDerived terms
* average bear * average Joe * averagely * averagenessVerb
(averag)- If you average 10, 20 and 24, you get 18.
- The daily high temperature last month averaged 15°C.
- to average a loss
- Gulls average much larger than terns, with stouter build