commonplace

& a. place.] A. As substantive : 1. An ordinary or common topic or subject; a general idea. *2. A commonplace-book. "This being read both in his [Peter Martyr's] common places, and on the first to the Corinthians."- Milton Tetrachord on. 3. An ordinary or common remark (in a contemptuous sense); a platitude, a truism. "He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppre ion, and forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it."-Ma caulay: Hist. Eng., ch. iv. B. As adj .: Common, ordinary, trivial, trite. "Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters some trite commonplace sentence, to prove the value and fleetne of time."-Lord Chesterfield: Letters. commonplace-book, s. A book in which short extracts or things to be remembered are arranged under general heads. "I turned to my commonplace - book, and found his case under the word 'coquette.'"- Tatler. *com-mon-plāçe, v . t . & i. [COMMONPLACE, 8.] A. Trans.: To reduce to or range under general heads. "I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing an universal history from the historians." IMG:content-0325.png:[blocks in formation] *com-mon-ish, h, v . t . [Lat. pref.com, and Eng. monish (q. v.).] To warn, to admonish. ( Whita- mon places or platitudes. ker, Disp. on Script., p. 661.)