banal

Definitions

From the bannum strand, but by a twist. 'Banal' first meant 'belonging to the ban' — the feudal lord's communal mill or oven that every villager was forced to use. Because everyone used it, banal came to mean 'common to all,' then 'commonplace,' and finally 'dull and unoriginal.'

Why It Means This

A word that traveled from compulsion to boredom. The feudal 'ban' forced everyone to share one mill; what is shared by everyone becomes ordinary; what is utterly ordinary becomes dull. So a banal remark is one anyone could have made — stale, predictable, lacking any spark.

Example Sentences

• 1.

  The film's plot was banal and utterly predictable.

• 2.

  He made some banal comment about the weather.

Easily Confused

banal vs trivial — banal means 'boringly ordinary, unoriginal' (a banal song); trivial means 'unimportant, of little value' (a trivial detail). A banal thing is dull; a trivial thing is minor. They overlap but the focus differs: banal = no freshness, trivial = no weight.