Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality or character of being prosaic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The characteristic of being prosaic.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun commonplaceness as a consequence of being humdrum and not exciting

Etymologies

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Examples

  • There is the grandiosity of that self-description – splendidly undercut by the prosaicness of the "twenty practical actions for happiness", which urges people to hug each other, exercise more often and say thank you more often.

    Happiness: When smiling becomes policy | Editorial 2011

  • We still don't know the decisive elements that went into that change from an older style of symbolism and writing poetry to the new style — the new style being a new type of visionariness but also a certain intermingling of prosaicness or a diminished fear of the difference between prose and poetry.

    An Interview with Harold Bloom 2006

  • Its pretention to historic accuracy begot prosaicness in its approach to the style of the chronicles.

    Four Arthurian Romances de Troyes Chr��tien 1914

  • All her meanness and prosaicness was forgotten, all her imperfections and shortcomings; it was home, the one tangible thing in the glittering emptiness of the spheres.

    Gulliver of Mars 1905

  • All her meanness and prosaicness was forgotten, all her imperfections and shortcomings; it was home, the one tangible thing in the glittering emptiness of the spheres.

    Gulliver of Mars Edwin Lester Linden Arnold 1896

  • But, alas! for the prosaicness of this workaday world, they had to assume the attitudes of lawyer and client; and discourse of crime instead of love.

    The Silent House Fergus Hume 1895

  • But a mill-village is one vast expanse of mediocrity and prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than Peter's to recognize the beautiful in such a life.

    The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Ford, Paul L 1894

  • She had sung in the choir when she was a girl, and had an enduring love for music, which age and prosaicness could not affect.

    A Wandering Samaritan 1886

  • Thoughts have some characteristics of fancy, of freedom, even of unreality, which are wanting to the prosaicness of heavy material things.

    The Mind and the Brain Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps Alfred Binet 1884

  • But a mill-village is one vast expanse of mediocrity and prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than Peter's to recognize the beautiful in such a life.

    The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Paul Leicester Ford 1883

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