garden variety
20
3.5
- adjective
- /ˈɡɑrdən ˈværəti/
- Informal
:
común y corriente
- They're not your common garden variety millionaires.
- garden-variety criminal
- garden-variety headache
- garden-variety murder
Now 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
843
1.0
Having the usual qualities of a person, thing, or group
797
1.0
Happening often or seen in many places
683
1.0
Normal and not special or unusual
54
3.4
Ordinary and not special or new
35
1.0
The usual or expected state
24
3.3
Ordinary and not special
Ordinary and not special
Ordinary and not special, like a simple jacket you can buy anywhere
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'.