- commonplace
- commonplace n Commonplace, platitude, truism, bromide, cliche mean an idea or expression lacking in originality or freshness.A commonplace is a stock idea or expression which is frequently little more than the obvious, conventional, and easy thing to think or say on a given subject{
the machinery as well as the characters of those novels became the commonplaces of later romancers— Raleigh
}{the superficial commonplaces which pass as axioms in our popular intellectual milieu— Cohen
}Platitude adds to commonplace the suggestions of flatness or triteness and, often, utterance with an air of importance or novelty{what is that sentimental platitude of somebody's . . . about the sun being to flowers what art is to life?— Hewlett
}{traditional schoolbook platitudes and campaign slogans— Frankfurter
}A truism is a self-evident truth; it differs from an axiom (see axiom at PRINCIPLE) in frequently implying a somewhat superfluous insistence upon the obvious{Pope's palpable truism "The proper study of mankind is man"
}{it is a truism that a sound society makes for sound individuals— Day Lewis
}Bromide applies to a commonplace, platitude, or truism that strikes the listener or reader as especially dull or hackneyed and, often, as an evidence of its maker's low-grade mentality{despite the silly old bromide, the fat man is more often than not the best loved of men— McClure's Mag.
}{under the circumstances the usual, indeed the expected, Chamber of Commerce bromides would have been acceptable—J. M. Brown
}Cliché applies to an expression which when new was fresh and full of meaning but which by constant iteration has become not only dull but hackneyed and stereotyped{the cliche is merely the sometime novel, that has been loved not wisely but too well— Lowes
}{the pathetic cliché, "for the sake of the children," has perpetuated many unsuccessful marriages— D. B. Lewis
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
