Mundane

How to spell mundane

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mundane

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mundane mean?

1. adjectiveLacking interest or excitement; ordinary and commonplace.

Mundane in a sentence

• Most of her workday was filled with mundane administrative tasks.

• After the holiday, returning to mundane household chores felt tedious.

Where does mundane come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin mundus, which simply meant 'the world' and, by extension, the physical universe and everything earthly within it. From mundus the Romans formed the adjective mundanus, meaning 'belonging to the world' or 'worldly', as opposed to the heavenly or spiritual realm. English picked the word up through Old French mondain in the late Middle Ages, and the older sense of 'earthly, worldly' eventually softened into the modern meaning of 'ordinary, dull, lacking interest'. The shift makes sense: what is merely of this everyday world came to feel commonplace and unexciting. The same Latin mundus survives in the loftier word 'cosmopolitan' by way of Greek parallels, and the spelling trap here is the unstressed first syllable, written 'mun' though it sounds like a vague 'muhn', followed by the slightly surprising '-dane' ending rather than '-dain'.

How the word is built

• mund- (from Latin mundus: world)
• -ane (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')