Adjective

(en-adj)

Debased, uncouth, distasteful, obscene.

* {{quote-book

, year= 1551 , year_published= 1888 , author= , by= , title= A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society. , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=JmpXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA217 , original= , chapter= , section= Part 1 , isbn= , edition= , publisher= Clarendon Press , location= Oxford , editor= , volume= 1 , page= 217 , passage= Also the rule of false position, with dyuers examples not onely vulgar , but some appertaynyng to the rule of Algeber. }}

* The construction worker made a vulgar suggestion to the girls walking down the street.

(classical sense) Having to do with ordinary, common people.

* Bishop Fell

It might be more useful to the English reader to write in our vulgar language.

* Bancroft

The mechanical process of multiplying books had brought the New Testament in the vulgar tongue within the reach of every class.

* 1860 , G. Syffarth, "A Remarkable Seal in Dr. Abbott's Museum at New York", Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis? , age 265

Further, the same sacred name in other monuments precedes the vulgar name of King Takellothis , the sixth of the XXII. Dyn., as we have seen.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics.

* 1824 , Sir (Walter Scott), , ch. 7:

"This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."

*

, 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:

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.