garden variety
25
3.5
- adjective
- /ˈɡɑrdən ˈværəti/
- Informal
- They're not your common garden variety millionaires.
- garden-variety criminal
- garden-variety headache
- garden-variety murder
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Watch on YouTubeNow this can be on a continuum from garden variety noisy anger all the way to violence.
- Now this can be on a continuum from garden variety noisy anger all the way to violence.
- It's very rare for the reason for general garden variety obesity out in the world to be due to a genetic problem.
- I would be on one side of a garden variety Houston St.
- But for those more garden variety roles, sometimes they don't have a flaw in my opinion.
Examples
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If the national bank is to be held liable for garden-variety negligence, state tort law will govern.
Academic text (2006) -
Well, you may find this is not your garden variety evaluation.
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Those animals that attacked you back in the forest were hardly your garden variety bird, were they?
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The rest of the year, I'm just a garden-variety landscape artist.
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He's a simple, garden-variety paranoid.
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Plain, ordinary, garden-variety honesty.
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Your common, garden-variety hoodlums.
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After the long meeting, we fell into the garden variety of small talk about the weather.
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She prefers garden variety restaurants that serve typical comfort food.
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His garden variety excuses for being late didn't impress his boss.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Happening often or seen in many places
714
1.0
Having the usual qualities of a person, thing, or group
681
1.0
Normal and not special or unusual
295
1.0
The usual or expected state
47
3.4
Ordinary and not special or new
29
3.3
Ordinary and not special
1
4.4
Ordinary and not special, like a simple jacket you can buy anywhere
Ordinary and not special
How Ordinary
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'garden' (domestic plot) and 'variety' (type/kind) give a loose image of a common, everyday type of thing, so there is some compositional cue. However, the idiomatic extension to mean simply 'ordinary' or 'nothing special' is metaphorical and not fully predictable for a B1 learner without exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The phrase garden variety comes from gardening: a garden has common plants and a variety is a type of plant, so a 'garden variety' was a usual, everyday plant you could find in any garden. That's why today garden variety means 'ordinary' or 'not special'.