common

American  

[kom-uhn] / ˈkɒm ən /

adjective

commoner, commonest

1. belonging equally to, or shared alike by, two or more or all in question.

   common property;

   common interests.

   Antonyms:

   individual

2. pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation, or culture; public.

   a common language or history;

   a common water-supply system.

3. joint; united.

   a common defense.

4. widespread; general; universal.

   common knowledge.

   Synonyms:

   accepted, popular, prevalent

5. of frequent occurrence; usual; familiar.

   a common event;

   a common mistake.

   Synonyms:

   everyday, habitual, customary

   Antonyms:

   unusual

6. hackneyed; trite.

7. of mediocre or inferior quality; mean; low.

   a rough-textured suit of the most common fabric.

8. coarse; vulgar.

   common manners.

9. lacking rank, station, distinction, etc.; unexceptional; ordinary: common people; a common thief.

   a common soldier;

   common people;

   the common man;

   a common thief.

10. Dialect. friendly; sociable; unaffected.

11. Anatomy. forming or formed by two or more parts or branches.

    the common carotid arteries.

12. Prosody. (of a syllable) able to be considered as either long or short.

13. Grammar.

    1. not belonging to an inflectional paradigm; fulfilling different functions that in some languages require different inflected forms.

       English nouns are in the common case whether used as subject or object.

    2. constituting one of two genders of a language, especially a gender comprising nouns that were formerly masculine or feminine.

       Swedish nouns are either common or neuter.

    3. noting a word that may refer to either a male or a female.

       French élève has common gender. English lacks a common gender pronoun in the third person singular.

    4. (of a noun) belonging to the common gender.

14. Mathematics. bearing a similar relation to two or more entities.

15. of, relating to, or being common stock.

    common shares.

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noun

1. Chiefly New England. Often commons. a tract of land owned or used jointly by the residents of a community, usually a central square or park in a city or town.

2. Law. the right or liberty, in common with other persons, to take profit from the land or waters of another, as by pasturing animals on another's land commonofpasturage or fishing in another's waters commonofpiscary.

3. (used with a singular or plural verb) commons,

   1. the commonalty; the nonruling class.

   2. the body of people not of noble birth or not ennobled, as represented in England by the House of Commons.

   3. Commons, the representatives of this body.

   4. Commons, the House of Commons.

4. commons,

   1. (used with a singular verb) a large dining room, especially at a university or college.

   2. (usually used with a plural verb) food provided in such a dining room.

   3. (usually used with a plural verb) food or provisions for any group.

5. Ecclesiastical. Sometimes Commons

   1. an office or form of service used on a festival of a particular kind.

   2. the ordinary of the Mass, especially those parts sung by the choir.

   3. the part of the missal and breviary containing Masses and offices of those saints assigned to them.

6. Obsolete.

   1. the community or public.

   2. the common people.

idioms

1. in common, in joint possession or use; shared equally.

   They have a love of adventure in common.

common British  

/ ˈkɒmən /

adjective

1. belonging to or shared by two or more people

   common property

2. belonging to or shared by members of one or more nations or communities; public

   a common culture

3. of ordinary standard; average

   common decency

4. prevailing; widespread

   common opinion

5. widely known or frequently encountered; ordinary

   a common brand of soap

6. widely known and notorious

   a common nuisance

7. derogatory considered by the speaker to be low-class, vulgar, or coarse

   a common accent

8. (prenominal) having no special distinction, rank, or status

   the common man

9. maths

   1. having a specified relationship with a group of numbers or quantities

      common denominator

   2. (of a tangent) tangential to two or more circles

10. prosody (of a syllable) able to be long or short, or (in nonquantitative verse) stressed or unstressed

11. grammar (in certain languages) denoting or belonging to a gender of nouns, esp one that includes both masculine and feminine referents

    Latin sacerdos is common

12. anatomy

    1. having branches

       the common carotid artery

    2. serving more than one function

       the common bile duct

13. Christianity of or relating to the common of the Mass or divine office

14. informal ordinary; unexceptional

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noun

1. (sometimes plural) a tract of open public land, esp one now used as a recreation area

2. law the right to go onto someone else's property and remove natural products, as by pasturing cattle or fishing (esp in the phrase right of common )

3. Christianity

   1. a form of the proper of the Mass used on festivals that have no special proper of their own

   2. the ordinary of the Mass

4. archaic the ordinary people; the public, esp those undistinguished by rank or title

5. mutually held or used with another or others

common More Idioms  

More idioms and phrases containing common

• in common

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Synonym Usage

See general. Common, vulgar, ordinary refer, often with derogatory connotations of cheapness or inferiority, to what is usual or most often experienced. Common applies to what is accustomed, usually experienced, or inferior, to the opposite of what is exclusive or aristocratic: The park is used by the common people. Vulgar properly means belonging to the people, or characteristic of common people; it connotes low taste, coarseness, or ill breeding: the vulgar view of things; vulgar in manners and speech. Ordinary refers to what is to be expected in the usual order of things; it means average or below average: That is a high price for something of such ordinary quality.

Other Word Forms

• commonness
  noun
• overcommonness
  noun
• overcommon
  adjective
• quasi-common
  adjective
• overcommonly
  adverb
• quasi-commonly
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of common

First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English comun, from Anglo-French, Old French, from Latin commūnis “common,” presumably originally “sharing common duties,” akin to mūnia “duties of an office,” mūnus “task, duty, gift,” from an unattested base moin-, cognate with mean ²; cf. com-, immune

Explanation

When something's common, it's usual, or it happens frequently. It's more common than you might think for little kids to be terrified of clowns. Things that are common happen all the time — they're ordinary. It's common for people to put ketchup on their French fries, and a pigeon is an extremely common type of bird to see in a city. Common can also refer to something that's shared by a group, like a region's common culture. In fact, a green space in the center of a town is sometimes called a common, maybe because it's shared by everyone in the town.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

common commoner commonest

Peatland fires, common in the area, generally smoulder and spread under the soil for weeks or months, emitting huge quantities of smoke and only rarely causing surface blazes.

From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026

This is what sports have become in the replay era: overriding your own eyes and common sense in favor of digital forensics and wonky clarifications that arrive long after the stadium has cleared out.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026

Both of those companies would be stopped by common sense and consumer behavior, never mind government regulations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026

It cannot be seen, and is becoming increasingly common as the climate warms.

From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026

It had been so long since he’d met someone he shared something in common with.

From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova

The fugitive Aegon experienced what it was like to be a boot-licking commoner.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026

For all his introspection, Dunk wrongfully justifies his own survival as a transaction — a king-to-be traded for a commoner.

From Salon ● Feb. 25, 2026

One compares her to baseball star Shohei Ohtani, another praises her as a "commoner prime minister".

From Barron's ● Feb. 4, 2026

Princess Mette-Marit married Norway's Crown Prince Haakon as a commoner when her son Marius Borg Høiby was four, and is in line to become queen when her husband accedes to the throne.

From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2026

The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living—without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

And it is the third commonest type of cancer in the UK - leading to about 35,000 deaths each year.

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2024

So-called hyperemesis gravidarum is the commonest cause of admission to hospital of women in the first three months of pregnancy.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 13, 2023

Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee noted, "has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations."

From Salon ● Aug. 31, 2022

Rather, Button selected their products for BuyMeOnce because of the inventive ways Davek responds to the commonest problem: losing that umbrella.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2018

I had become ... so unused to the sports and games of boys, that I knew I was awkward and inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them.

From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz

Related Words

• accepted
• commonplace
• everyday
• familiar
• frequent
• natural
• prevailing
• prevalent
• routine
• simple
• trivial
• typical
• universal