banal

A trite or banal remark or statement, especially one expressed AS if it were original or significant.

Making banal remarks was one of his bad habits.

In Ulysses, the events of the day seem to be trivial, insignificant or even banal.

The reality was far more banal: doctors concluded that Princess Grace had suffered some sort of attack, most likely a minor stroke.

It sounds almost banal to say, [but] it's a really big world out there, and the United States has responsibilities practically everywhere.

The most banal observation counts as an "insight" , while anything that vaguely makes sense is said to have "compelling logic" .

While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling , they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life.

It was above all that our deliberations were banal or irrelevant.

To some readers, The One Minute Manager may seem to be every bit as banal and simplistic - as obvious, in fact - as Mr Dale's The Obvious.

This is a banal untruth, uttered with an air of spurious profundity designed to embarrass people not on board for their project.

and remove the need for "banal handshakes which are not always enthusiastic. "

As it is, of course, in his own sketchy paintings, where laden titles such as "Gas Chamber" explain elusive or banal images.

Enormous SUVs and tank-like vehicles like the Hummer compete for showroom space with banal, small sedans.

The film could then be embedded into otherwise banal correspondence as punctuation at the end of a sentence.

Her pinions pussyfoot around the contradiction or pedantically try to harmonize the notion of radical and banal evil.

So the effect of banal commentary , and banal thinking in general , is to turn everything into undifferentiated pap .

Chris' banal advice was no help to us in solving our problem.

While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realized that they are deprived of nessessities of life.

You could say safety is not banal, but then it is not really a value at all.

camp: an affectation or appreciation of manners and tastes commonly thought to be artificial, vulgar, or banal .

The last time I did anything of this kind I was 13; the result then was banal and embarrassing and I hid it from everyone.

It suggests that war might lead us to see as banal the very horrifying act of killing other humans.

At times he vies with the leaders of the great sect of the Platitudinarians, and he can be as banal as he is brilliant.

There are other reasons as well, including the difficulty of saying something inspirational without being banal.

Those familiar only with the banal 20th-century examples made for the tourist trade are in for a happy surprise.

Put like this it sounds banal, though actually it's heresy.

This innocuous, quite banal statement conceals a great profundity: that no structure in the living world arises de novo.

Naturally. Simultaneous turns was one such idea, but we didn't implement because of banal lack of time.

I have become the victim of a banal situation blown up into a political scandal because of domestic squabbles inside Ukraine.

But how do these other worldly qualities emerge from the banal subject of a bowl of flowers?

In realizing the political ambition of Japan, the banal political cultures should be reformed.

Even if you are saying something banal , it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

The photographs are a series of close-up, large scale images of banal objects including paint tins and garden ornaments.

and the prince and the princess live happily from then on. That's about it, the banal form of fairy tales.

The policy-related passages in "The Audacity of Hope" , his second autobiography, are scattershot and banal.

What could be more routine and apparently banal than taking up soap and water and washing yourself?

To casual browsers, most of the resulting content is, unsurprisingly, banal.

We will not get carried away, never tweeting about a fresh "cuppa" or, worse, some banal corporate achievement.

They purposefully conspire to carry out these acts of terrorism under the banal excuse of self defence.

Her every move in public, no matter how banal, gets chronicled by a swarm of videographers.

The discovery that laughter is more often produced at banal comments than jokes prompts the question, why did it evolve?

A testing of oneself, a fear of giving in to the most banal and marketable of one's talents, still draws many of the young to New York.

All of this is true, but hardly helpful now that the city faces a more banal problem: not enough money.

He is lazy; he is thoughtless; his taste in restraints is banal and his housekeeping habits a horror.

There was nothing new in his banal lecture.

Today, it's hard to believe liberation or aesthetic renewal can lie in something so banal.

Most financial-planning advice, like most New Year's resolutions, is too complex or too banal.

It could be banal, but I was born on the sea-side and in Italy (in Florence and here, in Milan), I miss the sea very much.

What once looked unwearable now seems ordinary, and what once seemed banal now looks right.

All the same, it's for the most banal reasons that sacrifice is celebrated.

they are fed up with the banal, middle-of-the-road taste that America does so well.

With children in TOW I was planning a more wholesome, though equally as banal, existence.

This sounds pretty banal but you'd be surprised how often people fail to heed this standard advice.

and rose above banal social and moral conventions to construct an authentic life.

'It's true that I get angry with things that are banal, ' he says.

His poems were either crystalline and profound, or slight and banal.

But of some 100 newly translated titles that China promoted, most are banal introductions to China from state publishers.

They enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling.

Money is not everything, banal but very true.

The condition or quality of being banal; triviality.

HE efforted to bring reality in a world that was besmirched with the unreality of sin, mortality and banal affairs.

Banal, but true-and sometimes worth repeating.

The latest effort is also banal and embarrassing but this time I am reproducing it below.

But instead of using the time to master Swedish or calculus, we often choose to devote it to the utterly banal.

Its psychological insight is banal.

To cause to become banal and trite through overuse .

A banal landscape of ugly new towers flanks both sides.

Their conversation was banal full of uninteresting remarks, such as "nice weather" and "slow traffic today. "

The restaurant serves banal food.

Some recommendations under this head are banal: one is that George Bush keep in touch with Iraq's prime minister.

Looked at today, this list seems almost banal.

Beckham, a banal genius, became a vehicle for debating Britain's dumbing-down.

The explanation is banal: Young men have more strength and more to gain.

He preluded with some banal remarks.

Then, a busyness but banal day was began.

Mr. Murakami is far too playful and allusive an artist to be restricted by a banal criterion like that one.

Do you often find yourself siding with terrible people just to make some banal point about the US being terrible?

Any declaration of values is made all the more dismal because the values themselves are so banal.

His frequent use of cliches made his essay seem banal.

Naturally, there is some very banal motivation at play, which is that nobody ever won votes campaigning for laxity on drugs.

This is evidence that many people in this world follow the banal , while so few individuals are truly humane and virtuous.

The campus is very flat and the existing classroom building is an out of scale and banal volume.

choosing between the insipid dullness of a drawing-room comedy and the banal mediocrity of a musical extravaganza

The level is mundane, and even the voiceovers, which reproduce the conversations of the plane's crew, are banal;

To give a deliberately artificial, vulgar, or banal quality to:

If don't wanna knuckle under the banal life

Reform in the Banal Political Culture and the Development of Modern Japan