Banal \Ban"al\, a. [F., fr. ban an ordinance.]
Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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]
WordNet (r) 2.0
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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
commonplace, hackneyed, old-hat, shopworn, stock(a), threadbare, timeworn, tired, trite, trivial, well-worn
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