ordinary
part of speech
adjective; noun (out of the ordinary)
meaning for a pupil
1) Ordinary means normal, usual or plain; not special or different. tree →
2) «Out of the ordinary» means unusual or surprising. tree →
sense in the lessons
In stories ordinary people or ordinary days are often where adventures begin; in maths, ordinary numbers may be contrasted with special ones. Phrases: «an ordinary day», «ordinary people», «out of the ordinary», «nothing out of the ordinary».
examples
- astronomy, etc.; for ordinary purposes there was a decimal system of notation, without tiie principle of position. (Mordell, The Origin of Letters and Numerals according to Sefer Yetzirah (1914)) tree →
- It was just an ordinary day at school. tree →
- She seemed like an ordinary girl, but she had a secret. tree →
- Ordinary pencils are fine for the test. tree →
- Nothing out of the ordinary happened. tree →
- The magic shop looked ordinary from the outside. tree →
- Ordinary people can do great things. tree →
- It was no ordinary cat — it could talk! tree →
- But this was no ordinary centipede. tree →
note
Adverb: ordinarily (usually). Opposite: extraordinary, special, unusual. Spelling trap: ordin-ary (not ordinery). Trap: «extraordinary» means very special, not «extra ordinary».
In the corpora
- These are ordinary parts of a big family.
- Tense music, close-ups and slow motion make ordinary mistakes feel dangerous; turn the sound down and the drama shrinks.
- In the UK the watershed is 9 pm: programmes not suitable for children are not shown on ordinary TV channels before then.
- Chatbots are trained to be pleasant: "Great question!" they say, even when you asked something quite ordinary.
- Not one person: governments, companies, scientists and ordinary people all have a say, through laws, votes and choices.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «ordinary» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.