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vocabulary
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banal
in a sentence

show 105 more with this conextual meaning
  • If one wants to appraise it, it is at once heroic and banal—but who wants to do that?   (source)
    banal = uninteresting due to lack of anything unusual
  • (Finally she forces herself to speak a banality:) Oh, Mama, you shouldn't have.   (source)
    banality = something uninteresting due to a lack of anything original or unusual
  • After a few minutes spent exchanging earnest banalities, we went our separate ways.†   (source)
  • Callie Fitzsimmons said the design was old-fashioned and banal, with all those droopy flowers and leaves — Victorian, the artists' worst insult in those days.†   (source)
  • His words sounded banal even to his own ears.†   (source)
  • She saw very old, infirm people with their mouths agape; although they were, at best, only partially alert, they gave their stuporous attention to images that my grandmother described as "too surpassing in banality to recall."†   (source)
  • Abandonment, guilt, betrayal: the boy in front of me would consider them banal dilemmas.†   (source)
  • Her letters consist mostly of banalities—we are busy; Frau Elena says hello—or else arrive in his bunkroom so full of censor marks that their meaning has disintegrated.†   (source)
  • They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.†   (source)
  • But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.†   (source)
  • He is unaccustomed to the banality of domestic flights, the narrow cabin, the single bag he's packed, small enough to stow overhead.†   (source)
  • I'm thinking the most banal thing in the world: I am thinking that I don't want this to happen.†   (source)
  • All right, to make a banal long story into a banal short story, I'll cut to the uplink.†   (source)
  • In the weeks Mae had been transparent, there had been downtime, a good deal of it, but her task, primarily, was to provide an open window into life at the Circle, the sublime and the banal.†   (source)
  • I don't know anything about Da5id, except for some rather banal statistics.†   (source)
  • In 1986 the group decided to target Mc-Donald's, later explaining that the company "epitomises everything we despise: a junk culture, the deadly banality of capitalism."†   (source)
  • Then came an interminable stream of news and updates, much of it almost physically painful in its banality.†   (source)
  • He made it sound so banal, so bloodless, so common.†   (source)
  • I'd picked through the trash to retrieve one, read the letter, sticky with alfredo sauce, and it had been utterly banal: talk of tennis and travel and other things preppy.†   (source)
  • After the first letter that she carried to the telegraph office with an ember of revenge against her own destiny, she had allowed an almost daily exchange of messages in what appeared to be casual encounters on the street, but she did not have the courage to permit a conversation, no matter how banal and fleeting it might be.†   (source)
  • Domestic violence…the term was so banal.†   (source)
  • They were friends, far beyond the reach of anything so banal and corny as color.†   (source)
  • The first objects that Eragon noticed seemed too obvious, too banal to him: a yellow lily by his feet, Oromis's overgrown hut, the white stream, and the landscape itself.†   (source)
  • I'd never thought of myself as anything but banal.†   (source)
  • Somehow, compared with the choices he'd made and the places he'd traveled, her life seemed so …. banal.†   (source)
  • She had an all-American look, but not banal.†   (source)
  • He apologized for the intricacies, the contradictions, the mind-numbing banalities of "our dear tax code," and apologized for its complexities.†   (source)
  • "Use all the banal trigger words you can come up with" was the gospel according to St. Conklin.†   (source)
  • Simon's voice had been so blithe, so banal, so completely ordinary.†   (source)
  • As instructed, Deo read Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.†   (source)
  • There could be storm warnings even in the most delicate and banal of conversations.†   (source)
  • My inclination was to marvel at the feel of the carpet beneath my feet, to catalogue the banal miracle of every stick of furniture, every lamp, the telephone, to go and wash myself in the tile shower—or again to go out into the street simply to experience what it was like to walk into all the doors, all the joints and movies and restaurants, to talk to white men in the lobby without servility, to look at women and see them smile courteously.†   (source)
  • Dimly she was conscious of fingernails, and heard herself gasp "Please," certain of the banality, the stupidity of the word even as she uttered it.†   (source)
  • I had gone down from New York to Baltimore, where she lived, for one of my infrequent visits and, afterwards, had written her with some banal advice to look for the silver lining, to count her blessings instead of burdening others with her miseries.†   (source)
  • I was close to him and I said something perfectly banal about the skill of the dancers.†   (source)
  • The same banality.†   (source)
  • But you know he was natural, in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.†   (source)
  • He began to realize the emotion, and the loneliness, behind the banality of what she had said; he was ashamed of himself to have answered as if it were merely banal.†   (source)
  • A tune of utter monotony filled the room with agonizing, unforgettable banality.†   (source)
  • As one feels when in an ordinary social conversation, kept tranquil by banalities, some person makes a remark that strikes below the surface, perhaps in error letting slip what he really thinks of you, and the shock sweeps one off one's balance, causing a nervous giggle or some stupid sentence that makes everyone present uncomfortable, so she felt: she had lost her balance; she had no control over her actions.†   (source)
  • That such configurations are banal does not rob them of their power.†   (source)
  • And they often deal with banal subjectsnot just religion.†   (source)
  • Then Gottfried got drunk one last time and died in a most banal way.†   (source)
  • I take inventory of the banal details of Mama's life in this room.†   (source)
  • He hesitated, hating the banality of their conversation.†   (source)
  • It was a happy boy who kept this meticulous and rather banal account of his first year.†   (source)
  • For a reason as banal as it was pointless — and entirely too familiar.†   (source)
  • I removed my now useless mask, planted my ice ax into the mountain's frozen hide, and I exchanged banal congratulations with the hunkered on the ridge.†   (source)
  • They'll want to know when Crake cut his first tooth and spoke his first word and ate his first root, and other such banalities.†   (source)
  • It was too banal to be true.†   (source)
  • This comment, which would once have struck him as in a league with such banalities as You look so good I could just eat you up now seemed not banal at all.†   (source)
  • ]), and once, Andie's car, pulled down a dirt road in Hannibal after I'd taken her for a visit one day, a much more satisfying reenactment of my banal field trip with Amy (You took me here so I could hear you chat I About your boyhood adventures: crummy jeans and visor hat).†   (source)
  • The sound track on the disk, previously consisting of the usual banal pants, gasps, exhortations, and instructions one would expect from such activity, suddenly filled the holopit with screams-first the young man's, then Sira's.†   (source)
  • But how banal that would have sounded.†   (source)
  • It's like some third-rate shocker, Ainsworth or Bulwer-Lytton at their most bloodthirsty and banal: the Major reeling drunkenly up the front steps, alone, in the dusk, then entering the front hall.†   (source)
  • Life in the world, which had caused her so much uncertainty before she was familiar with it, was nothing more than a system of atavistic contracts, banal ceremonies, preordained words, with which people entertained each other in society in order not to commit murder.†   (source)
  • Daylight, and the banality of family small talk, would dispel whatever impact she had made as a ghostly illuminated apparition.†   (source)
  • A banality, Mr Undersecretary.†   (source)
  • He does not talk about purity any more but of the necessity of using common cultural sign systems to reflect the iconic banality of our times.†   (source)
  • Banal gossip, by and large.†   (source)
  • She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong!†   (source)
  • The Thinker bears about the same relation to sculpture as the Mona Lisa does to painting, or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" to poetry -- a great work of art that has become hard to see for itself, buried under banal associations and dumb jokes.†   (source)
  • And, nevertheless, in spite of all this daring, this running of risks, the misadventures which had actually befallen him had been banal indeed and might have befallen him anywhere.†   (source)
  • Jake had also explained that depositions drag on for days because the lawyers are being paid by the hour, or at least the ones who are asking the banal and monotonous questions.†   (source)
  • Of course, I accepted his banalities as a rather amateurish attempt at… at statecraft, as my former husband phrased it.†   (source)
  • In the light of the incredible, the soul for the first time saw the body as something other than banal; for the first time it looked on the body with fascination: all the body's matchless, inimitable, unique qualities had suddenly come to the fore.†   (source)
  • It sets you up with the banality of common events, camouflages the danger signals, positions you with kind and mothering hands, whispers graceful cadences and cunning lullabies, and leads you blithely to terrifying reckoning, perhaps to extinction, but always to banality again.†   (source)
  • It sounded hopelessly banal.†   (source)
  • He began to realize the emotion, and the loneliness, behind the banality of what she had said; he was ashamed of himself to have answered as if it were merely banal.†   (source)
  • He must protect himself not only from without but from within, and against the most natural of impulses: though he earn a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a razor; though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but banalities; though be be an affectionate husband and father, he must under all circumstances withhold himself from those in whom he should naturally confide.†   (source)
  • Beyond doubt those words characterize Rudolf Hoss and the workings of his mind, an organism so crushingly banal as to be a paradigm of the thesis eloquently stated by Hannah Arendt some years after his hanging.†   (source)
  • And while she continues to talk, murmurously spinning out her banalities about "consideration," "tenderness,"†   (source)
  • While we were exchanging banalities I became for the first time aware of a church bell chiming, far-off but distinct, in the direction of Flatbush Avenue.†   (source)
  • Really, all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town's appearance and of life in it.†   (source)
  • I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't.†   (source)
  • The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the '-IZE' AND 'DE-' formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the NOT 'UN-' formation.†   (source)
  • By deficient eyes she is reduced to inferior states; by the evil eye of ignorance she is spellbound to banality and ugliness.†   (source)
  • Readin' 'n writin' 'n 'rithmetic… To a passing stranger, it might have looked silly--Johnny standing there in his greenish tuxedo and fresh linen holding the hand of a thin ragged child and singing the banal song so unself-consciously on the street.†   (source)
  • He was the awkwardest speaker in the world apart from the lore of the sea, but there are times when it requires a high courage to speak the banal.†   (source)
  • And in the long run, to these sterile, reiterated monologues, these futile colloquies with a blank wall, even the banal formulas of a telegram came to seem preferable.†   (source)
  • Apparently, there is something in these initiatory images so necessary to the psyche that if they are not suppliedfrom without, through myth and ritual, they will have to be announced again, through dream, from within—lest our energies should remain locked in a banal, long-outmoded toy-room, at the bottom of the sea.†   (source)
  • The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life.†   (source)
  • Otherwise it is merely a pleasant banality, good for singing calm little songs down on the plains.†   (source)
  • Confounded by this lapse into banality, Conseil left his sentence hanging.†   (source)
  • The situation was indeed grotesque, had it not been at the same time so fearfully tragic: the poor, weary woman, broken in spirit, and half frantic with the bitterness of her disappointment, receiving on her knees the BANAL gallantries of her deadly enemy.†   (source)
  • She attempted by a subterfuge, if not to eliminate altogether their commercial banality, at least to minimise it, to substitute for the bulk of it what was art still, to introduce, as it might be, several 'thicknesses' of art; instead of photographs of Chartres Cathedral, of the Fountains of Saint-Cloud, or of Vesuvius she would inquire of Swann whether some great painter had not made pictures of them, and preferred to give me photographs of 'Chartres Cathedral' after Corot, of the…†   (source)
  • She promised to meet him in Deauville, the coming summer, "though," she sighed, "it's becoming too dreadfully banal; nothing but Americans and frowsy English baronesses."†   (source)
  • First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was an enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared—really all the banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any one had told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.†   (source)
  • She sought faith in spacious banal phrases, taken from books: "the instinctive nobility of simple souls,"†   (source)
  • They hurt each other very much, and sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably he used banal phrases about her duties and she used phrases quite as banal about freedom, and through it all, her discovery that she really could get away from Main Street was as sweet as the discovery of love.†   (source)
  • …of music—had enriched his appetite for painting as well, it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one shrinks from giving his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli' suggests not so much the actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which has of late obtained common currency.†   (source)
  • Really! how banal!†   (source)
  • Banal freethinkers would have had reason to think so, It was a time when our own priests wanted to breathe the spirit of Catholic hierarchy into Freemasonry, and there was even a flourishing Jesuit lodge at Clermont, in France.†   (source)
  • She watched his anxiety melting away under her sunny smile, and soon perceived that, whatever doubt may have crossed his mind at the moment, she had, by the time the last bars of the minuet had been played, succeeded in completely dispelling it; he never realised in what a fever of excitement she was, what effort it cost her to keep up a constant ripple of BANAL conversation.†   (source)
  • Two rooms furnished in banal bourgeois style, one opening into the other and separated only by portieres, looked toward the valley: a dining room done in "antique German"; a combination living room and office, with sofa and chairs, bookcases and heavy wool carpets, a fraternity cap and crossed swords hung above a desk, plus a small smoking alcove, done in "Turkish" style.†   (source)
  • He ridiculed the philanthropist's reluctance to shed blood, his reverence for life, claimed that such a reverence for life belonged to only the most banal rubbers-and-umbrellas bourgeois periods, but that the moment history took a more passionate turn, the moment a single idea, something that transcended mere "security," was at work, something suprapersonal, something greater man the individual—and since that alone was a suite worthy of mankind, it was, on a higher plane, the normal…†   (source)
  • Good God, I'm speaking in banalities, but when one is young, everything is, of course, new—new and astounding.†   (source)
  • He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.†   (source)
  • You're very brilliant—you know that's the way you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family.†   (source)
  • The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in.†   (source)
  • Teasing you along, letting you pile up a little paper profit, then banal Your account closed at 20.†   (source)
  • Now and then the spirit of American shows a transient faltering, and its inventiveness is displaced by a banal extension of meaning, so that a single noun comes to signify discrete things.†   (source)
  • Their almost invariable tendency, at the start, was to make use of names familiar at home, or to invent banal compounds.†   (source)
  • If, by the chances that condition language-making, it acquires a special and limited meaning, not served by any existing locution, it enters into sound idiom and is presently wholly legitimatized; if, on the contrary, it is adopted by the populace as a counter-word and employed with such banal imitativeness that it soon loses any definite significance whatever, then it remains slang and is avoided by the finical.†   (source)
  • Not only do the present lords of the soil debase them in speaking them; in many cases they are formally displaced by native names of the utmost harshness and banality.†   (source)
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