everyday
Often confused with every day
- 1Commonplace and ordinary; typical of normal life rather than anything special or unusual.
The film finds real drama in everyday situations like commutes and grocery runs.
Smartphones have turned once-futuristic technology into an everyday convenience.
Similarordinary, commonplace, common, routine, mundane
Oppositeunusual, extraordinary, exceptional
Note
Here the word turns from use to judgment. Something everyday is so familiar it no longer seems remarkable. Malcolm Knox, writing in The Monthly in 2010, calls influenza an everyday virus that still inspires awe. In everyday people, it means ordinary folk, the many rather than the notable. Unlike the "for ordinary use" meaning, nothing is being saved for best here.
- 2Suitable or intended for ordinary use, rather than reserved for special occasions.
He keeps an everyday watch for the office and a dressier one for events.
These are the everyday glasses; the crystal stays in the cabinet for holidays.
Similarordinary, regular, casual
Note
The sense closest to the word's origin: Middle English everidayes meant literally "every day's." Things described this way belong to every day rather than to special occasions. In Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children (1906), Bobbie puts on her everyday frock, the dress kept for wear rather than for show. The adjective is not comparable, so you would not call one frock more everyday than another.
- 3Present or recurring every day; happening on a daily basis rather than occasionally.
Stretching has become an everyday part of his recovery routine.
In the rainy season, afternoon storms are an everyday occurrence on the coast.
Similardaily
Oppositeoccasional, rare
Note
The literal, clock-and-calendar meaning, close to daily, and one that invites a playful partner. Writers coin everyweek to step down a notch. T. R. Reid wrote in 1994 of a sight "not an everyday, or even an everyweek, event." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall hopes his cookbook becomes an "everyday" or at least an "everyweek" book. It often appears in the negative: not an everyday occurrence.
Less common meanings
- 4The ordinary or routine day or occasion; the unremarkable course of daily life.
His novels find quiet meaning in the everyday.
After months of travel, she was glad to return to the everyday of school runs and grocery lists.
Similarroutine, mundane, ordinary
Note
Mostly heard with the article: the everyday is ordinary life treated as a single thing. It is at home in literary and critical writing about ordinary experience. Without the article, it means ordinary days as against occasions, and both uses can sit in one line: "Putting away the tableware for everyday, a chore which is part of the everyday." It is uncountable, so there are no everydays.
- 5Commonplace or ordinary during the daytime.
The lighthouse, so mysterious at night, was an everyday sight in the afternoon glare.
This was an everyday and everynight scene a couple of decades ago.
1931, Jack While, Fifty Years of Fire Fighting in LondonSimilarordinary, commonplace, mundane, unremarkable
Note
A rare meaning that lives mostly in a pairing with everynight. Jack While's Fifty Years of Fire Fighting in London (1931) recalls "an everyday and everynight scene." Delgado and Muñoz move the hopes of emancipation "from everyday to everynight life." Day here is the opposite of night, not a unit of time. Used alone, it will be heard as the plain "ordinary" meaning, so it needs that contrast to work.
- 6Each day in unbroken succession, or each day of the week except Sunday.
Note
An old way of counting days, in use from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. As a noun, it meant the days in unbroken succession, or else the working days with Sunday set apart. You will meet it only in older texts. Today the idea is written as two words, every day, and the closed-up noun has moved on to the routine of ordinary life.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle English everidayes or every dayes, meaning "everyday, daily, or constant" and literally "every day's," equivalent to every + day.