out of the ordinary

1. Unusual, uncommon, exceptional, as in The venison they served was certainly out of the ordinary. This expression sometimes, but not always, indicates that something is better than the usual. However, the negative version, nothing out of the ordinary, usually indicates that something is not special or outstanding, as in It was an interesting lecture, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Example Sentences

“It doesn’t feel like we do anything out of the ordinary or crazy,” Jones said recently.

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The discussion didn’t feel out of the ordinary for longtime listeners of “New Heights.”

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And even that short spell of outperformance has been pretty out of the ordinary of late.

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The temperatures are out of the ordinary for the US Grand Prix - Texas is going through a mid-October heatwave, external that is making conditions more akin to summer than autumn.

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His penchants for drinking and smoking were well-known and hardly out of the ordinary for that era; they rarely impeded Candy’s work and, in at least one notable instance, seem to have enhanced it: Both the documentary and the biography recount how Candy indulged in a late-night bender with Jack Nicholson before rising the next morning to shoot a scene in “Splash” where his character fumbles, flails and smokes his way through a round of racquetball.

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