5 uses
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Definition
uninteresting due to a lack of anything original or unusual
(editor's note: This word is correctly pronounced differently by various educated speakers of American English.)
(editor's note: This word is correctly pronounced differently by various educated speakers of American English.)
- Otherwise it is merely a pleasant banality, good for singing calm little songs down on the plains.5.9 - Walpurgis Night (92% in)
- 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.5.6 - Humaniora (26% in)
- 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...6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (74% in)
- 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.6.8 - A Good Soldier (26% in)
- Good God, I'm speaking in banalities, but when one is young, everything is, of course, new—new and astounding.7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (73% in)
There are no more uses of "banal" in The Magic Mountain.
Typical Usage
(best examples)