Commonplace vs Prosaic - What's the difference?
commonplace | prosaic | 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:
Pertaining to or having the characteristics of prose.
(of writing or speaking) Straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.
(usually of writing or speaking but also figurative) Overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring; humdrum; dull; unimaginative.
As adjectives the difference between commonplace and prosaic
is that commonplace is ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics while prosaic is pertaining to or having the characteristics of prose.As a noun commonplace
is a platitude or cliché.As a verb commonplace
is to make a commonplace book.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)
prosaic
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The tenor of Eliot's prosaic work differs greatly from that of his poetry.
- I was simply making the prosaic point that we are running late.
- His account of the incident was so prosaic that I nodded off while reading it.
- She lived a prosaic life.