from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The quality of being common.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. State or quality of being common or usual.
- n. Triteness; meanness.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The state or fact of being common; frequent occurrence; frequency.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the quality of lacking taste and refinement
- n. ordinariness as a consequence of being frequent and commonplace
- n. the state of being that is commonly observed
- n. sharing of common attributes
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Nothing could have been more commonplace than the whole incident, but the commonness was the beauty of it.
There was something common about him -- not like the labouring men, but a kind of town commonness, which is twenty times worse to my thinking; and if I didn't like him before, you may guess I didn't waste much love on him when I see poor Ellen's looks.
In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas.
She produced the lunch box, and for once Bess was too ravenously hungry to protest at the "commonness" of it, and they set to at its delicious contents with a will.
Mr. Hartman, the father, was a wholesale grocer -- a business large enough to have brought wealth, but painfully tainted with "commonness".
She was a little unhealthy thing, dark and sallow and sulky, with thin lips that showed a lack of temperament, and she had a stiffness and preciseness, like a Board School teacher -- just that touch of "commonness" which Lena relied on to put him off.
The ceremonial inferiority or uncleanness in consumable goods due to "commonness," or in other words to their slight cost of production, has been taken very seriously by many persons.
Add to this the "commonness" of Palin and her appeal becomes even clearer.
If there is any interest which an honest lawyer can share with an honest fisherman, a decent cockney with a decent Bedouin Arab, he does it in virtue of this nobler "commonness;" it may include the interests of good fellowship, of delight in song or nature, of a belief in God, and a host of indescribable interests which do not belong to the mechanism and compulsory organisation of life; it includes some "dram of folly," some capacity for "laughable blunder" in intercourse between men.
"commonness," or in other words to their slight cost of production, has been taken very seriously by many persons.