Prosaic

//pɹoʊˈzeɪ.ɪk// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to or having the characteristics of prose.

    "The tenor of Eliot's prosaic work differs greatly from that of his poetry."

  2. 2
    Straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.

    "I was simply making the prosaic point that we are running late."

  3. 3
    Overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring. usually

    "His account of the incident was so prosaic that I nodded off while reading it."

Adjective
  1. 1
    not challenging; dull and lacking excitement wordnet
  2. 2
    lacking wit or imagination wordnet
  3. 3
    not fanciful or imaginative wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
banaluninterestingactualaridasceticattic

Example

More examples

"The prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism."

Etymology

From Middle French prosaïque, from Medieval Latin prosaicus (“in prose”), from Latin prosa (“prose”), from prorsus (“straightforward, in prose”), from Old Latin provorsus (“straight ahead”), from pro- (“forward”) + vorsus (“turned”), from vertō (“to turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to turn, to bend”).

Related phrases

matter of fact

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.