common denominator
8
3.4
- noun
- /ˈkɑːmən dɪˈnəʊmɪneɪtər/
:
denominador común
- High hourly billing does appear to be a common denominator in many overbilling cases.
- lowest common denominator
- least common denominator
- common denominator for general appeal
If there is a recurring theme in your life, you are the common denominator, not them.
- If there is a recurring theme in your life, you are the common denominator, not them.
- So everybody's got healthcare, but your quality drops down to the lowest common denominator, which is really sad.
- I mean you could look just Google and find all the different kinds, but the common denominator of all of them was you.
- I feel like Dave Ramsey's comments and content are mostly driven for the lowest common denominator.
- And the common denominator in the human experience is our emotions and our feelings.
- Because if morality requires only what everyone can do, the everyone is the lowest common denominator.
- And it makes sense that you would think it's you because you may feel I'm the only common denominator here.
- But the bottom line is that you will devolve to the lowest common denominator amongst the friend group that you're in.
- Did you know so and so try to engage that person, but bring it down to the lowest common denominator.
- And if we considered child directed to be the lowest common denominator, effectively that has stifled regular speech.
- And we use the methodology of anthropology, epidemiology to kind of tease out the common denominators.
Examples
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First, the common denominator among communities with large numbers of retirees is proximity to a military base.
Academic text (1994) -
And public service can be, if you will, the common denominator for our generation.
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I can think of one person who is the common denominator in all of his problems.
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Over time, the most and highest success a person will ever be able to achieve, the one common denominator, is their health.
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Is there a common denominator that you see cut across these men and women that make them the greatest?
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What is the common denominator between all of these brands?
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And the common denominator in the human experience is our emotions and our feelings.
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Above all, human relationships are the common denominator of both social sciences and social studies.
Academic text (1992) -
But what I've seen as a common denominator in all these situations is toxic relationships.
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The common denominator of all successful teams is effective communication.
Synonyms
31
4.6
A quality that people or things share
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
common + denominator
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'common' (shared) with 'denominator' (the bottom part of a fraction): it denotes a denominator that two or more fractions share for arithmetic operations. This is a compositional noun phrase following standard English logic (and parallels in many languages), so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Common denominator comes from a simple math image: a denominator is the bottom number in a fraction and common means shared, so finding a bottom number that all the fractions share links them together. That's why we use common denominator to mean 'a feature or quality that all members share'.