Dictionary Definition
mundane adj
1 found in the ordinary course of events; "a
placid everyday scene"; "it was a routine day"; "there's nothing
quite like a real...train conductor to add color to a quotidian
commute"- Anita Diamant [syn: everyday, quotidian, routine, unremarkable, workaday]
2 concerned with the world or worldly matters;
"mundane affairs"; "he developed an immense terrestrial
practicality" [syn: terrestrial]
3 belonging to this earth or world; not ideal or
heavenly; "not a fairy palace; yet a mundane wonder of unimagined
kind"; "so terrene a being as himself" [syn: terrene]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
Latin mundus (“world”)Pronunciation
-
- Rhymes: -eɪn
Adjective
Translations
ordinary
- Estonian: tavaline
- Finnish: tavanomainen, tavallinen
- German: alltäglich
- Norwegian: alminnelig, repeterende
tedious
- Finnish: ikävä, tylsä
- Norwegian: kjedelig
- French: prosaïque
- Hungarian: földi (1,2), hétköznapi (2,3)
Noun
- In the context of "after “the”": earthly, ordinary objects and concerns
Translations
ordinary objects and concerns
- Finnish: maallinen
Related terms
See also
- Wikipedia article on the use of “mundane” as a derogatory term.
Extensive Definition
- This page is about science fiction insider terminology. See Journal of Mundane Behavior for the scholarly journal. See Wiktionary for the adjective mundane.
Some examples:
- In science fiction fandom, some fans classify all non-fans as "mundanes" or, for short, "danes".
- Goths also commonly refer to non-goths as "mundanes" or "norms".
- In historical reenactment fandom, too, such as The Society for Creative Anachronism, some participants classify all non-participants as "mundanes". Similarly, one's "mundane" name is the legal name one goes by in the outside world. "Mundanes," sometimes shortened to just "danes" (not to be confused with people of Danish descent), is also a term for normal everyday clothes, as opposed to historical garb.
- In the science fiction television series Babylon 5, telepathic humans (especially Psi Corps members) classify all non-telepathic humans as "mundanes". The classification is employed mainly, but not solely, by telepathic characters who have telepath-supremacist ideologies (such ideologies being one of the issues dealt with by the series), and was deliberately chosen to mirror the classification in science fiction fandom.
- In fantasy literature the term or some equivalent is often used to apply to non-magical people or the non-magical society. It is used in Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, and Bill Willingham's comic book series Fables (often shortened to "mundies" in the latter). The Harry Potter series uses the term muggle in the same way.
- In furry fandom, it is used to describe non-furries, or "humans".
- In Sanguinarian circles or "houses" the word Mundane means "non vampire/vampyre/Sanguinarian" or human. Some consider it derogatory but because it is a very private group(s) and there are many different Houses with different lingos and Terminology. See Sanguinarius.org for Real Vampires
- In text-based online role-playing games, the term is commonly used to refer to the player as opposed to their character, typically shortened to "mun".
According to a document titled The Mundane
Manifesto, mundane
science fiction is science fiction which does not make use of
interstellar
travel or other common tropes of the genre.
Otherwise, within the scope of the software communities of
free
and open-source
software some proponents of the respective movements classify
those which do not know enough about their views as "mundanes",
signifying their normalcy, their lack of being beyond the regular
users of computers.
See also
References
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Philistine, animal, arid, banausic, barren, carnal, carnal-minded, common, commonplace, dry, dull, earthbound, earthly, earthy, everyday, flat, fleshly, humdrum, infecund, infertile, insipid, literal, lowly, material, materialistic,
matter-of-fact, nonsacred, ordinary, pedestrian, plain, poetryless, profane, prosaic, prosing, prosy, reprobate, secular, sensual, staid, stolid, stuffy, tellurian, telluric, temporal, terrene, terrestrial, tiresome, unblessed, unembellished, unfanciful, unhallowed, unholy, unideal, unidealistic, unimaginative, unimpassioned, uninspired, uninventive, unoriginal, unpoetic, unregenerate, unromantic, unromanticized, unsacred, unsanctified, unspiritual, vapid, workaday, workday, worldly