ordinary

[ awr-dn-er-ee ]

/ ˈɔr dnˌɛr i /

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See synonyms for: ordinary / ordinaries / ordinariness on Thesaurus.com

adjective

of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional: One novel is brilliant, the other is decidedly ordinary; an ordinary person.

plain or undistinguished: ordinary clothes.

somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre.

customary; usual; normal: We plan to do the ordinary things this weekend.

Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. common, vulgar, or disreputable.

(of jurisdiction) immediate, as contrasted with something that is delegated.

(of officials) belonging to the regular staff or the fully recognized class.

noun, plural or·di·nar·ies.

the commonplace or average condition, degree, etc.: ability far above the ordinary.

something regular, customary, or usual.

Ecclesiastical.

an order or form for divine service, especially that for saying Mass.
the service of the Mass exclusive of the canon.

History/Historical. a member of the clergy appointed to prepare condemned prisoners for death.

English Ecclesiastical Law. a bishop, archbishop, or other ecclesiastic or his deputy, in his capacity as an ex officio ecclesiastical authority.

(in some U.S. states) a judge of a court of probate.

British. (in a restaurant or inn) a complete meal in which all courses are included at one fixed price, as opposed to à la carte service.

a restaurant, public house, or dining room serving all guests and customers the same standard meal or fare.

penny-farthing.

Heraldry.

any of the simplest and commonest charges, usually having straight or broadly curved edges.
honorable ordinary.

OTHER WORDS FOR ordinary

4 regular, accustomed.

See synonyms for ordinary on Thesaurus.com

OPPOSITES FOR ordinary

1 extraordinary, unusual, exceptional.

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Idioms about ordinary

in ordinary, in regular service: a physician in ordinary to the king.

out of the ordinary,

exceptional; unusual: Having triplets is certainly out of the ordinary.
exceptionally good; unusually good: The food at this restaurant is truly out of the ordinary.

Origin of ordinary

First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English ordinarie (noun and adjective), from Latin ordinārius “regular, of the usual order,” equivalent to ordin- (stem of ordō “row, regular arrangement”) + -ārius adjective suffix; see order, -ary

synonym study for ordinary

3. See common.

OTHER WORDS FROM ordinary

or·di·nar·i·ness, nounqua·si-or·di·nar·y, adjectivesu·per·or·di·nar·y, adjectiveun·or·di·nar·y, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2021

How to use ordinary in a sentence

So despite the fact that the experiment involved extreme pressures and temperatures, Nilsson says, “it influences water in our ordinary life.”
Supercooled water has been caught morphing between two forms|Emily Conover|November 19, 2020|Science News
The 1918 flu, for example, crisscrossed the globe and claimed tens of millions of lives, yet by 1920, the virus that caused it had become significantly less deadly, causing only ordinary seasonal flu.
Will the Coronavirus Evolve to Be Less Deadly?|Wendy Orent|November 15, 2020|Singularity Hub
His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.
Are We Wired to Be Outside? - Issue 92: Frontiers|Grigori Guitchounts|November 11, 2020|Nautilus
Honda’s launch of its Level 3 Legend in March 2021 will be one watched by regulators and ordinary drivers alike around the world as one of the first true tests of a mass-produced and regulator-approved autonomous vehicle system.
Honda to mass-produce Level 3 autonomous cars by March|Darrell Etherington|November 11, 2020|TechCrunch

Soon those experiments showed that polywater’s properties came about from the presence of impurities in ordinary water.
These are science’s Top 10 erroneous results|Tom Siegfried|November 10, 2020|Science News
It was enough that he qualified as that all too unordinary social phenomenon, "an amusing person."
Linda Lee, Incorporated|Louis Joseph Vance
It was a six-legged, striped, catlike beast, not unordinary as interplanetary animals go.
The World with a Thousand Moons|Edmond Hamilton

British Dictionary definitions for ordinary

ordinary

/ (ˈɔːdənrɪ) /

adjective

of common or established type or occurrence

familiar, everyday, or unexceptional

uninteresting or commonplace

having regular or ex officio jurisdictionan ordinary judge

maths (of a differential equation) containing two variables only and derivatives of one of the variables with respect to the other

noun plural -naries

a common or average situation, amount, or degree (esp in the phrase out of the ordinary)

a normal or commonplace person or thing

civil law a judge who exercises jurisdiction in his own right

(usually capital) an ecclesiastic, esp a bishop, holding an office to which certain jurisdictional powers are attached

RC Church

the parts of the Mass that do not vary from day to dayCompare proper (def. 13)
a prescribed form of divine service, esp the Mass

the US name for penny-farthing

heraldry any of several conventional figures, such as the bend, the fesse, and the cross, commonly charged upon shields

history a clergyman who visited condemned prisoners before their death

British obsolete

a meal provided regularly at a fixed price
the inn providing such meals

in ordinary British (used esp in titles) in regular service or attendancephysician in ordinary to the sovereign

Word Origin for ordinary

C16: (adj) and C13: (some n senses): ultimately from Latin ordinārius orderly, from ordō order

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with ordinary

ordinary

see out of the ordinary.

ordinary

OTHER WORDS FOR ordinary

OPPOSITES FOR ordinary

Idioms about ordinary

Origin of ordinary

synonym study for ordinary

OTHER WORDS FROM ordinary

Words related to ordinary

How to use ordinary in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for ordinary

Word Origin for ordinary

Other Idioms and Phrases with ordinary