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common knowledge

common knowledge

27 1.6
Things most people understand and accept without proof
  • noun
  • /ˈkɑːmən ˈnɑːlɪdʒ/
translation icon : conocimiento general
  • It is common knowledge that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
  • a matter of common knowledge
  • become common knowledge
  • now common knowledge

I was so incredibly embarrassed because I didn't know what the common knowledge was in Canada.

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Examples

  • For one thing, it's common knowledge that southern Indiana doesn't have that many frogs.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • There are six plain sources of evidence that can be easily understood from common knowledge by the typical student.

    Academic text (2010)
  • Well, I thought that was common knowledge.

  • That was pretty common knowledge.

  • Everything in them was common knowledge, public property for more than a century.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • So like, it's common knowledge that America lost the Korean War, right?

  • Some of these foods, however, remain outside the common knowledge of both food safety professionals and consumers.

    Academic text (2006)
  • It was common knowledge that my father was out in that storm.

  • Salmon joins together people's individual lives through common knowledge and experience.

    Academic text (2001)
  • Unlike some aspects of the initiation, this one was common knowledge and not surrounded by taboos.

    Fiction book (1990)

Synonyms

public knowledge
vscommon knowledge
14 2.0

Facts that anyone can find out

is information people accept as true without special proof
general knowledge
vscommon knowledge
3 2.3

Facts many people know about different subjects

is information most people accept without needing proof

Antonyms

State of being hard to understand

How Known

common knowledge
27 1.6
secret
1.0

Surface Forms

Morphology

common + knowledge

The meaning 'information that is generally known' is directly and compositionally derived from 'common' (shared/by many) + 'knowledge' (information), following a straightforward adjective + noun semantics. This is a literal, non-idiomatic collocation with clear cross-linguistic equivalents, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily understand it.

Etymology

Common knowledge comes from the idea of the 'common' — a shared place where villagers met and heard the same news, with common meaning shared and knowledge meaning what people knew. If something was on the common, everyone knew it, so common knowledge means 'information everyone knows' today.