Vocabulary Word
Word: commonplace
Definition: ordinary; N: something ordinary or common; trite remark
Definition: ordinary; N: something ordinary or common; trite remark
Sentences Containing 'commonplace'
It can reproduce what it is called upon to reproduce, and if human nature demands the commonplace, the instrument will be made to satisfy the demand.
The commonplace is not the true, but only the shallow, view of things.
If he can not paint the commonplace aspect of our mountain, how can he expect to paint any expression of the deeper things in it?
On the other hand, the painter with no artistic impulse who makes a laboriously commonplace picture of some ordinary or pretentious subject, has equally failed as an artist, however much the skilfulness of his representations may gain him reputation with the unthinking.
For how can the draughtsman, who does not know how to draw accurately the cold, commonplace view of an object, hope to give expression to the subtle differences presented by the same thing seen under the excitement of strong feeling?
So that to say of a drawing, as is so often said, that it is not true because it does not present the commonplace appearance of an object accurately, may be foolish.
And assuming one to be a commonplace man and the other a great artist, what a difference will there be in their work.
But it is not enough#encouraged#, and the prize is generally given to the drawing that is most complete and like the model in a commonplace way.
They are full of that wise selection by a great mind that lifts such work above the triviality of the commonplace to the level of great imaginative painting.
For in the continual observation of anything you have set your easel before day after day, comes a series of impressions, more and more commonplace, as the eye becomes more and more familiar with the details of the subject.
For however commonplace the subject seen by the artist in one of his``flashes,''it is clothed in a newness and surprise that charm us, be it only an orange on a plate.
This sounds very commonplace, but it is surprising how few students make it their aim.
It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.
I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones; ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness of situation and environment.
Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become commonplace.
or some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or, maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead.
The`burnt district'of Boston was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial district in any city in the world that can surpass it or perhaps even rival it in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.
Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitions followers, not only as a leader and lawgiver, but also as the personification of equality.''
``Certainly you give a most commonplace air to your explanation, but it is not the less true that you Ah, but what do I hear?''
You can not take me for a commonplace man, a mere rattle, emitting a vague and senseless noise.
Cervantes, indeed, to the last generously and manfully declared his admiration of Lope's powers, his unfailing invention, and his marvellous fertility; but in the preface of the First Part of "Don Quixote" and in the verses of "Urganda the Unknown," and one or two other places, there are, if we read between the lines, sly hits at Lope's vanities and affectations that argue no personal good-will; and Lope openly sneers at "Don Quixote" and Cervantes, and fourteen years after his death gives him only a few lines of cold commonplace in the "Laurel de Apolo," that seem all the colder for the eulogies of a host of nonentities whose names are found nowhere else.
This is Sancho's mission throughout the book; he is an unconscious Mephistopheles, always unwittingly making mockery of his master's aspirations, always exposing the fallacy of his ideas by some unintentional ad absurdum, always bringing him back to the world of fact and commonplace by force of sheer stolidity.
The advantage of this is that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote as a mouthpiece for his own reflections, and so, without seeming to digress, allow himself the relief of digression when he requires it, as freely as in a commonplace book.
When a troubadour professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which the next was compelled to cap by some still stronger declaration; and so expressions of devotion went on rising one above the other like biddings at an auction, and a conventional language of gallantry and theory of love came into being that in time permeated the literature of Southern Europe, and bore fruit, in one direction in the transcendental worship of Beatrice and Laura, and in another in the grotesque idolatry which found exponents in writers like Feliciano de Silva.
But there is no redeeming feature in the Manchegan landscape; it has all the sameness of the desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages that break its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing venerable about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty; indeed, Don Quixote's own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses; everything is ignoble; the very windmills are the ugliest and shabbiest of the windmill kind.
It is the mean, prosaic, commonplace character of all the surroundings and circumstances that gives a significance to Don Quixote's vigil and the ceremony that follows.
It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, that give its peculiar flavour to the humour of Cervantes.
Cervantes at times makes it a kind of commonplace book for occasional essays and criticisms, or for the observations and reflections and gathered wisdom of a long and stirring life.
I was so ashamed to allude to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it.
Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow.
It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."
"As to the letters," he continued, glancing over them, "they are very commonplace.
The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his cuttings.
More Vocab Words
::: magnate - person of prominence or influence; powerful or influential person (in business or industry); Ex. oil magnate::: dissent - disagree
::: stint - set limits in amount or number; be thrifty; ADJ. stinting, unstinting; CF. stint:savings
::: pinch - squeeze between the thumb and a finger, or other edges; Ex. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. N: amount that can be held between the thumb and a finger
::: sycophant - servile flatterer; bootlicker; yes man; ADJ. sycophantic
::: unmitigated - (of something bad) not moderated; unrelieved or immoderate; without qualification; absolute; Ex. unmitigated disaster
::: maniacal - raging mad; insane; N. maniac: insane person; CF. mania: disorder of the mind; intense enthusiasm
::: sentimental - swayed by sentiment; appealing to the sentiments
::: tacit - understood (without actually being expressed); not put into words; Ex. tacit agreement
::: debauch - corrupt morally; seduce from virtue; N. debauchery: wild behavior (with sex and alcohol)
