Commonplace vs Simple - What's the difference?
commonplace | simple | 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:
Uncomplicated; taken by itself, with nothing added.
*
*:“[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?”
*2001 , Sydney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography , Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-78512-X), page 167,
*:There is no simple way to define precisely a complex arrangement of parts, however homely the object may appear to be.
Without ornamentation; plain.
Free from duplicity; guileless, innocent, straightforward.
* (ca.1576-1634)
*:Full many fine men go upon my score, as simple as I stand here, and I trust them.
*(Lord Byron) (1788-1824)
*:Must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue?
*(Ralph Waldo Emerson) (1803-1882)
*:To be simple is to be great.
Undistinguished in social condition; of no special rank.
Trivial; insignificant.
*1485 , (Thomas Malory), (w, Le Morte d'Arthur) , Book X:
*:‘That was a symple cause,’ seyde Sir Trystram, ‘for to sle a good knyght for seyynge well by his maystir.’
Feeble-minded; foolish.
Structurally uncomplicated.
#(lb) Consisting of one single substance; uncompounded.
#(lb) Of a group: having no normal subgroup.
#(lb) Not compound, but possibly lobed.
#(lb) Consisting of a single individual or zooid; not compound.
#:
#(lb) Homogenous.
(lb) Mere; not other than; being only.
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:A medicinewhose simple touch / Is powerful to araise King Pepin.
(medicine) A preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.
*, II.37:
*:I know there are some simples , which in operation are moistening and some drying.
*Sir W. Temple
*:What virtue is in this remedy lies in the naked simple itself as it comes over from the Indies.
(obsolete) A term for a physician, derived from the medicinal term above.
(logic) A simple or atomic proposition.
(obsolete) Something not mixed or compounded.
*Shakespeare
*:compounded of many simples
(weaving) A drawloom.
(weaving) Part of the apparatus for raising the heddles of a drawloom.
(Roman Catholic) A feast which is not a double or a semidouble.
(transitive, intransitive, archaic) To gather simples, ie, medicinal herbs.
Commonplace is a related term of simple.
As adjectives the difference between commonplace and simple
is that commonplace is ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics while simple is uncomplicated; taken by itself, with nothing added.As nouns the difference between commonplace and simple
is that commonplace is a platitude or while simple is (medicine) a preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.As verbs the difference between commonplace and simple
is that commonplace is to make a commonplace book while simple is (transitive|intransitive|archaic) to gather simples, ie, medicinal herbs.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)