Literary notes about ordinary (AI summary)
Writers employ the term "ordinary" to convey a range of meanings—from the everyday and commonplace to that which serves as a contrast for the exceptional. It is often used to mark a baseline of normalcy, as when a character is noted for being remarkably average [1] or when daily urban life is juxtaposed with lavish settings [2]. At times "ordinary" underscores technical or routine details, whether in conversation [3] or in descriptions of physical items and settings [4, 5]. Yet in other contexts, it offers a counterpoint to the extraordinary by signaling what is typically expected, only to later disrupt these expectations with hints of uniqueness or rarity [6, 7]. Thus, "ordinary" becomes a versatile literary tool, inviting readers to reflect on the familiar while also recognizing moments of divergence from it.
- No one in the Merryman family had ever been so ordinary as Anne.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey - All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - For about half an hour the conversation ran upon ordinary topics, but at last, we contrived, quite naturally, to give it the following turn: CAPT.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks.
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - They were always well dressed and well provided for, leading apparently an easy life, with but few of its ordinary troubles to perplex them.
— from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - But tell me this: how do you distinguish those extraordinary people from the ordinary ones?
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
