Pragmatic vs Prosaic - What's the difference?
pragmatic | prosaic |
Practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.
* The sturdy furniture in the student lounge was pragmatic , but unattractive.
*
philosophical; dealing with causes, reasons, and effects, rather than with details and circumstances; said of literature.
* Sir W. Hamilton
* M. Arnold
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 pragmatic and prosaic
is that pragmatic is practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory while prosaic is pertaining to or having the characteristics of prose.pragmatic
English
Alternative forms
* pragmatick (archaic) * pragmatique (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- Nor indeed are these restrictions pragmatic'' in nature: i.e. the ill-formedness of the ''heed''-sentences in (60) is entirely different in kind from the oddity of sentences like:
(61) !That man will eat any car which thinks he?s stupid
which is purely ''pragmatic (i.e. lies in the fact that (61) describes the kind of bizarre situation which just doesn?t happen in the world we are familiar with, where cars don?t think, and people don?t eat cars).
- Pragmatic history.
- Pragmatic poetry.
Synonyms
* (practical) down-to-earth, functional, practical, utilitarian, realisticAntonyms
* idealisticDerived terms
* pragma * pragmatically * pragmaticism * pragmaticsExternal links
* *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.