quotidian
adjective
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In William Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the character Rosalind observes that Orlando, who has been running about in the woods carving her name on trees and hanging love poems on branches, "seems to have the quotidian of love upon him." The Bard's use doesn't make it clear that quotidian comes from a Latin word, quotidie, which means "every day." But as odd as it may seem, his use of quotidian is just a short semantic step away from the "daily" adjective sense. Some fevers come and go but occur daily; in medical use, these are called "quotidian fevers" or simply "quotidians." Poor Orlando is afflicted with such a "fever" of love.
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Examples of quotidian in a Sentence
Cressida Leyshon, The New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2024
By excising Batman and his fantastical sway on Gotham from The Penguin, the city’s criminal underworld feels more grounded in the quotidian details of drug deals and power plays, in actual matters of life and death.
—Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 19 Sep. 2024
Its chief weapon in Tibet is not dystopian camps but something seemingly more quotidian: residential schools.
—Tenzin Dorjee, Foreign Affairs, 28 Nov. 2023
Yet, as Ukrainian citizens learn to coexist with the destruction that plagues their quotidian comings and goings, the resilience of the country’s artists couldn’t be more thunderous.
—Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 2 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Quotidian.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quotidian. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
quotidian
1 of 2 adjective
quotidian
2 of 2 noun
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