ordinary

«ordinary» in Mova's school dictionary: normal, usual or plain; not special or different — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

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

• 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.