Ordinaryise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To make something commonplace, dull or lacking any distinctive quality or special character
2. Reducing a thing to an everyday, unremarkable state by stripping away its uniqueness or exceptional features
3. Turning something exceptional into something plain and typical so that it no longer stands out

Etymology: "Ordinaryise" is the British spelling of "ordinarize," a verb meaning to make ordinary or to reduce something to the commonplace. It is formed from the adjective "ordinary" plus the verbalising suffix "-ize" (spelled "-ise" in British English), a suffix that comes from Greek "-izein" by way of Latin "-izare" and entered English in large numbers from the 1600s onward. "Ordinary" itself is much older: it came into English in the 1300s from Anglo-French "ordinarie" and Latin "ordinarius," meaning orderly or according to the regular order, from "ordo," "order." Its original sense leaned toward regular arrangement rather than dullness, and the slide toward "unremarkable" came later. The verb is a straightforward derivation rather than a word with a dramatic history. Its earliest recorded uses are in the 1600s and 1700s, and it has remained a rare, mostly technical or literary choice compared with its synonym "ordinarize" in American usage.

Synonyms: normalize, standardize, homogenize

Antonyms: distinguish, elevate