banal
Americanadjective
adjective
Related Words
See commonplace.
Other Word Forms
- banality noun
- banally adverb
Etymology
Origin of banal
First recorded in 1745–55; from French, Old French: “pertaining to a ban”; equivalent to ban 2 + -al 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
SEOUL—At a televised policy meeting last month, South Korea President Lee Jae Myung launched into a seemingly banal discussion about healthcare.
“What had been incredibly futuristic and achingly modern just moments ago,” he writes, “had transitioned to something almost banal within the space of a single ride.”
But sometimes, its pursuit delivers something even more interesting and memorable than a banal picture of perfection: someone to root for, flaws and all.
From Salon
This, like so much of the popular understanding of 15th- and 16th-century Florence, is one of those truisms so often repeated as to become banal.
Far from an indignity, I thought it lent a certain gravitas otherwise absent from my banal demeanor.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
