Ordinaryize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To render something plain, common, or unremarkable by stripping away its exceptional or distinctive qualities
2. To cause something to lose its special character and become ordinary or mundane like anything else
3. To convert something remarkable or noteworthy into something commonplace and unexceptional

Etymology: In the Middle Ages, "ordinary" was a respectable office before it was a description of the everyday. The Ordinary of Newgate was the chaplain who attended condemned prisoners at London's Newgate prison, and a bishop's ordinary was the church official with authority over a diocese. Both senses come from Latin "ordinarius," "orderly" or "regular," built on "ordo," "order" or "row." The sense of a fixed-price meal at an inn, the "ordinary," followed from the same idea of something regular and set. "Ordinaryize" pairs that adjective with the suffix "-ize," which entered English through French "-iser" from Late Latin "-izare" and ultimately from Greek "-izein." The suffix turns a noun or adjective into a verb meaning "to make into" or "to treat as." So "ordinaryize" means to make something ordinary, a formation that is rare and mostly limited to specialist or informal writing.