Banal

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Banal \Ban"al\, a. [F., fr. ban an ordinance.]
     Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:



  banal
       adj 1: obvious and dull; "trivial conversation"; "commonplace
              prose" [syn: {commonplace}, {trivial}]
       2: repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse; "bromidic
          sermons"; "his remarks were trite and commonplace";
          "hackneyed phrases"; "a stock answer"; "repeating
          threadbare jokes"; "parroting some timeworn axiom"; "the
          trite metaphor `hard as nails'" [syn: {commonplace}, {hackneyed},
           {old-hat}, {shopworn}, {stock(a)}, {threadbare}, {timeworn},
           {tired}, {trite}, {well-worn}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  72 Moby Thesaurus words for "banal":
     asinine, average, back-number, bewhiskered, bland, bromidic,
     central, cliched, common, commonplace, corny, cut-and-dried,
     everyday, fade, familiar, fatuous, flat, fusty, hackney, hackneyed,
     hoary, humdrum, intermediary, intermediate, jejune, mean, medial,
     median, mediocre, medium, middle-of-the-road, middling,
     milk-and-water, moderate, moth-eaten, musty, namby-pamby, normal,
     old, old hat, ordinary, pedestrian, petty, platitudinous, routine,
     sapless, set, silly, simple, square, stale, standard, stereotyped,
     stock, threadbare, timeworn, tired, trite, trivial, truistic,
     unimaginative, unoriginal, usual, vapid, warmed-over, waterish,
     watery, well-known, well-worn, wishy-washy, worn, worn thin