Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ordinary in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective

Ordinary means a person having immediate jurisdiction in a given case of ecclesiastical law, such as the bishop within a diocese. Example: “On an ordinary day I wake up at nine o'clock, work for six hours, and then go to the gym.”

Examples of ordinary by meaning

nounA place where such meals are served; a public tavern, inn.

  • I was at the Ordinary last fair day, and there was nothing else talked of.1919, Stanley J. Weyman, “III. The Lawyer Abroad”, in The Great House

adjectiveBeing part of the natural order of things; normal, customary, routine.

  • On an ordinary day I wake up at nine o'clock, work for six hours, and then go to the gym.

adjectiveHaving no special characteristics or function; everyday, common, mundane; often deprecatory.

  • I live a very ordinary life most of the time, but every year I spend a week in Antarctica.
  • He looked so ordinary, I never thought he'd be capable of murder.
  • It is never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea until the screw begins to revolve.1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC

adjectiveBad or undesirable.

  • Everyone started making suggestions as to what to do but they were all pretty ordinary ideas such as lighting a fire and hope someone would see the smoke and come to rescue us and so on.2007, Chris Viner-Smith, Australia′s Forgotten Frontier: The Unsung Police Who Held Our PNG Front Line, page 28
  • Since the general public gained access to the Internet in 1993-4, firstly by narrowband dial-up access and since 1998 by very ordinary, so-called broadband speeds (generally less than 1 Mbps), a social and cultural revolution has been underway.2010, Mal Bryce, Australia's First Online Community Ipswich Queensland, page 125

More sentences with ordinary

  • The notion of flow is basic to the study of ordinary differential equations.From the entry flow
  • If a prince violates the law, then he must be punished like an ordinary person.From the entry punish
  • You can tell his humility is real by how he treats ordinary people.From the entry humility
  • The vocabulary of social sciences is often incomprehensible to ordinary people.From the entry vocabulary
  • Paramedics are not just ordinary workers but lifesavers with a very important job.From the entry lifesaver
  • Experts warn against using ordinary words as passwords as they are vulnerable to dictionary attacks.From the entry dictionary attack
  • A lion is debruised when a bend or other ordinary is placed over it.From the entry debruised
  • An ambassador in ordinary is one constantly resident at a foreign court.From the entry in ordinary
  • It was an ordinary speech, until the president dropped a bomb: he would be retiring for medical reasons.From the entry bomb
  • They shipped it ordinary freight to spare the expense.From the entry freight
  • Nothing too much out of the ordinary.From the entry nothing
  • In the Royal Navy the ratings, in order, are: ordinary seaman, able seaman, leading seaman, petty officer and chief petty officer.From the entry rating
  • The food was expensive, and nothing out of the ordinary.From the entry out of the ordinary
  • The sharp-eyed detective noticed things the ordinary patrolman missed.From the entry sharp-eyed
  • Exponential generating functions are generally more convenient than ordinary generating functions for combinatorial enumeration problems that involve labelled objects.From the entry exponential generating function
  • If you strip away the hype, you find that he is just an ordinary person trying to make a living, like everyone else.From the entry strip away
  • In the Semitic languages, paragogic letters are added to the ordinary forms of words to express additional emphasis or a change in the meaning.From the entry paragogic
  • One case for pollicization is when a person is born with a five-fingered hand, and the radialmost finger is an ordinary finger and not a thumb.From the entry radialmost
  • It begins, as so many Chinese legal dramas do, with a perfectly ordinary act.2025 November 26, Fang Yongrui (pseudonym), “Tourism as Treason: Pastor Sun Chenghao Sentenced to Four and a Half Years for a Trip”, in…. From the entry honeymooner
  • Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is the world's most common form of cement.2023 December 27, Richard Foster, “Building a greener future”, in RAIL, number 999, page 36. From the entry portland cement
  • And even in ordinary times, conspicuous consumption violates the principle of detachment.2022, W. David Marx, chapter 5, in Status and Culture, Viking, →ISBN. From the entry on the nose
  • There was nothing ordinary about her job as the biologist on the television show Cryptid or Hoax?2020, Shona Husk, Close to the Truth, HarperCollins Australia, →ISBN. From the entry pterosaur
  • Starting with a small pharmacy tent, his work rapidly expanded, powered by donations from ordinary citizens.2017 April 6, Samira Shackle, “On the frontline with Karachi’s ambulance drivers”, in the Guardian. From the entry power
  • What areas of the brains of superagers are activated more than those of ordinary seniors?2017, Ilchi Lee, I've Decided to Live 120 Years, page 206. From the entry superager
  • Located in Pingqiao District of Xinyang, Henan Province, Haotang Village was ordinary and underdeveloped.2017, Zhang Xiaode [张孝德], Ye Peihong [叶培红], “Haotang Village: Keep the Original Flavor Of the Village”, in Zhou Gang [周钢], transl., Dreams…. From the entry Haotang
  • The karls were ordinary folk like farmers, craftsmen, blacksmiths and hunters.2016, Louise Spilsbury, “Powerful Kings and Suffering Slaves”, in The Vikings: Dig Up the Secrets of the Dead (History Hunters), Oxford…. From the entry karl
  • A simpler life, happier life, as a wife, a mother, an ordinary English countrywoman?2016, Peter Morgan, “Windsor”, in The Crown, season 1, episode 3, spoken by Queen Elizabeth II. From the entry countrywoman
  • Resisting this systematic stupidification is a noble purpose, which can only be pursued in ordinary life.2016, Michel Puech, The Ethics of Ordinary Technology, →ISBN, page 77. From the entry stupidification
  • Now even ordinary people wear vyshyvanka at weddings and vinok as well," she says.2016 February 5, Liana Satenstein, “In Ukraine, that Flower Crown Means More than You Think”, in Anna Wintour, editor, Vogue, New York…. From the entry vinok
  • Bath salts seemed ordinary, a record or book-token impersonal, a pot-plant unimaginative.2015, Margaret Yorke, No Fury, →ISBN. From the entry book-token
  • For example, incars are things ordinary folks have never dreamed of.2015, Thomas Satting, The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World, →ISBN, page 25. From the entry incar
  • Reconnect and bring the presence of your spirit animal into your ordinary, everyday affairs.2014, David Carson, How to Find your Spirit Animal, →ISBN. From the entry spirit animal
  • Ordinary punjis will penetrate thick uniforms or the upper part of a shoe.2013, Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Allied Sabotage Devices and Booby Traps, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 19. From the entry punji

Meaning of ordinary

  1. noun A person having immediate jurisdiction in a given case of ecclesiastical law, such as the bishop within a diocese.
  2. noun A courier; someone delivering mail or post.
  3. noun A judge with the authority to deal with cases himself or herself rather than by delegation.

Full definition of ordinary

Questions about ordinary in a sentence

How do you use ordinary in a sentence?
Ordinary is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “On an ordinary day I wake up at nine o'clock, work for six hours, and then go to the gym.”
What is a short sentence with ordinary?
“Nothing too much out of the ordinary.”
What does ordinary mean?
Ordinary means a person having immediate jurisdiction in a given case of ecclesiastical law, such as the bishop within a diocese.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ordinary (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use ordinary in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ordinary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.