prosaic
/pɹoʊˈzeɪ.ɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.60 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Pertaining to or having the characteristics of prose.
adj
Straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.
adj
Overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring.
Example Sentences
- "The tenor of Eliot's prosaic work differs greatly from that of his poetry."
- "I was simply making the prosaic point that we are running late."
- "His account of the incident was so prosaic that I nodded off while reading it."
- "She lived a prosaic life."
- "Our people are the most prosaic in the world, but the most faithful; and with curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from generation to generation, the superstition of what we call the education of a gentleman."
- "Their steepness and abruptness were even greater than I had imagined from hearsay, and suggested nothing in common with the prosaic objective world we know."
Etymology
From Middle French prosaïque, from Medieval Latin prosaicus (“in prose”), from Latin prosa (“prose”), from prorsus (“straightforward, in prose”), from Old Latin provorsus (“straight ahead”), from pro- (“forward”) + vorsus (“turned”), from vertō (“to turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to turn, to bend”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɹoʊˈzeɪ.ɪk/
- British English: /pɹəʊˈzeɪ.ɪk/
Inflected Forms
more prosaic (comparative)
most prosaic (superlative)