commonplace

Ordinary; not having any remarkable characteristics.

"This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."

In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts,[…], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned.

A platitude or cliché.

Finally he began to mutter some commonplaces which meant nothing particularly.

And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.

Something that is ordinary; something commonly done or occurring.

It is odd how easily the common-places of morality or of sentiment glide off in conversation. Well, they are "exceedingly helpful," and so Lord Avonleigh found them.

"MY dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker-street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.[…]"

A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.

Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of common-place.

A commonplace book.

To make a commonplace book.

To enter in a commonplace book, or to reduce to general heads.

I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing an universal history from the […]historians.

To utter commonplaces; to indulge in platitudes.

And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.

c. January 1620, Francis Bacon, letter to the King For the good that comes of particular and select committees and commissions, I need not commonplace.