Ordinary (pronounced awr-din-rhe (U) or awr-dn-er-ee (non-U))
(1) Of no special quality or interest; commonplace;
unexceptional.
(2) Plain or undistinguished.
(3) Somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre (often
when describing sporting competitions or in other contexts where expectations
of exceptional performance are high).
(4) Customary; usual; normal; the usual course of things;
normal condition or health; a standard way of behavior or action (use now most prevalent
in Ireland & Scotland).
(5) In slang (mostly US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line), common,
vulgar, or disreputable.
(6) In the definition of jurisdictional limits, immediate,
as contrasted with something that is delegated.
(7) In some places, of officials of the agencies of the
state, belonging to the regular staff or the fully recognized class.
(8) In ecclesiastical use, an order or form for divine
service, especially that used for Mass (the prescribed form of divine service, ie
those parts of the Mass that do not vary from day to day and (by extension) in secular
use, a book of rules or other document setting out ordinary or regular conduct.
(9) In the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, the
service of the Mass exclusive of the canon.
(10) A member of the clergy appointed to prepare
condemned prisoners for death, the use derived from the role of the chaplain of
Newgate prison who prepared prisoners for the gallows (obsolete).
(11) In English ecclesiastical law, a bishop, archbishop,
or other ecclesiastic (or their deputy or other nominee), in their capacity as
an ex officio ecclesiastical authority (typically, a bishop holding an office
to which certain jurisdictional powers are attached).
(12) In some US states, a judge of a court of probate.
(13) In a restaurant or inn, a complete meal in which all
courses are included at one fixed price per head (as opposed to à la carte
service) (both UK use, now rare).
(14) An arrangement whereby an individual hosts others to
a meal in a restaurant, latter billing the guests a pre-agreed amount.
(15) A late-nineteenth century term for the penny-farthing
bicycle (distinguishing them from the newer “safety bicycles”), still used
(along with "hi-wheel" and variants) by hobbyists.
(16) In heraldry, any of the simplest and commonest
charges (the “conventional”), such as the bend, fesse & cross, usually in geometric
form with straight or broadly curved edges and commonly charged upon shields
(17) In mathematics, (of a differential equation)
containing two variables only and derivatives of one of the variables with
respect to the other
(18) As All Ordinaries (“all ords” in the market vernacular)
index, a share index calculated using the last traded price of 500 of the
largest publically listed companies on the Australian Securities Exchange
(ASX).
(19) A courier; someone delivering mail or post (used
between the sixteenth & nineteenth centuries by those in the service of the
Royal Mail).
1250–1300: From the Middle English noun & adjective ordinarie (regular, customary, belonging
to the usual order or course, conformed to a regulated sequence or arrangement),
from the Anglo-Norman ordenarie, & ordenaire, from the Medieval Latin, noun use of the Classical Latin ordinārius (orderly, regular, of the
usual order), the construct being ordin-
(stem of ordō (row, rank, series, regular
arrangement) (genitive ordinis) + -ārius (the adjectival suffix). The alternative spelling ordinarie is long obsolete. Ordinary
is a noun & adjective, ordinariness is a noun, ordinarily, extraordinarily &
superextraordinarily are adverb and extraordinary (also as extra-ordinary) is
an adjective; the noun plural is ordinaries.
In English, the adjective was derived from the noun in
the sixteenth century in the sense of “common in occurrence, not distinguished
in any way” and this endured in English, the O-Level (once the lowest of the
three levels of the General Certificate of Education in the UK secondary school
system (dating from 1947 as a contraction of “ordinary level”) remaining
available in some overseas systems). Generally
though, the various noun uses adopted between the fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries faded for use except in the phrase “out of the ordinary” (someone of something
beyond that regularly encountered, expected or customary) although in fields as
diverse as steel fabrication and financial market trading, there were such uses
from the mid-twentieth century. The
adjective ornery was a dialectal contraction of ordinary (which most sources
list as class-based rather than a regionalism) in US English and first
documented in 1816 (the history in oral use unknown). It was used to convey the sense of “poor
quality, coarse, ugly” and by the 1860s the meaning ad evolved to the more
specific “mean, cantankerous and bad-tempered (orneriness the noun). That coining hints at the strange history of
the word which, following the practice in Latin, began as something neutral meaning
“normal, in the expected place, of the expected appearance etc” yet came to be
used (as a comparative) also in the negative (somewhat inferior, below average,
plain & unexceptional (even rather mediocre). By contrast, the extra- in extraordinary is
used not as an intensifier but to create an antonym; something extraordinary is
that which is exceptionally good.
Politicians are most inclined to speak of us as “ordinary people” which presumably
implies that even if only sub-consciously, they think of themselves (and others
in the political class) as extraordinary and the rest of us as ordinary indeed.
So calling
something ordinary can mean either it’s commonplace (nothing special or unusual)
and thus entirely average or its’ below average or of poor quality. An “ordinary day” might be one pleasingly
free of problems or one which has disappointed because nothing especially good
happened. To say someone is ordinary can
be a compliment if one is distinguishing them from the surrounding madmen,
nutcases and psychos and is essentially the same as calling them “normal” yet
it can also mean “dull” or “not that attractive” and just as the politicians
know we’re ordinary and they’re not, in the social media age “celebrities” and “ordinary
people” really are two separate populations; ‘twas ever thus of course but now
it’s an industry. In ecclesiastical and
secular law the old technical meaning persisted. The title of physician in ordinary to the
King (or Queen) is no longer in use but it meant simply the sovereign’s
personal doctor and additional doctors who might be summoned were styled either
physicians extraordinary or extra physicians.
They needed to be multi-skilled, at least one documented as having euthanized
a dying king to ensure the death could be announced in the respectable morning
broadsheets rather than the disreputable afternoon tabloids. Interestingly, years later, Lord Dawson would
speak in the House of Lords against the idea of euthanasia being provided for
in legislation, maintaining that it was something best left to the judgment of
the doctor in the room which will for some confirm the wisdom of Evelyn Waugh’s
(1903-1966) observation that the greatest risk to one is hospital is “being murdered by the doctors”. Although physicians-in-ordinary are no longer
described as such, in the Medical Household (attached to the Royal Household in
England), the positions of Apothecaries to the King & Occultist to the King
have never been disestablished.
In canon law, the term is used still to describe someone having
immediate jurisdiction in a given case of ecclesiastical law (typically a bishop
within a diocese). That use dates from
the fourteenth century and was picked up in the 1800s in secular judicial
administration to refer to a judge vested with the right to handle cases on the
basis of ex-officio authority, rather than by delegation. In other words, that authority was the
ordinary, normal authority held by a judge within their jurisdictional
competence. In the UK, the best-known
use was in the title Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (the Law Lords in casual use). These were the judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act (1876) to exercise
the judicial functions of the House of Lords which was the highest appellate for
most cases decided by the UK’s lower courts (apart from a handful of institutions
from which cases on appeal proceeded to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council). Because the lords of appeal in
ordinary technically were appointed as barons in the peerage of England, they
thus had the right to sit in the Lords and vote on legislation and this meant
ultimately they might be called to decide upon cases dealing with the very laws
they’d been part of creating. In
practice this was rarely controversial but it came to bother academic political
scientists and other theorists who noted the importance of the doctrine of the
separation of powers in a democratic system.
What made it worse (at least on paper) was the lord chancellor (1) sat
in and presided over the House of Lords, (2) was ex officio, a judge in the Court
of Appeal and the president of the Chancery Division (an inheritance from the
days prior to the Judicature Acts (1876) when the lord chancellor headed the
old Court of Chancery) and (3) was a member of cabinet. The office therefore straddled the executive,
legislative and judicial functions of government so the fingers were uniquely
were in three pies. It was something
which had been discussed for decades before the New Labour government, anxious
to do things which would please the various European Union (EU) critics, reformed
the arrangements, taking advantage of the prevailing mood to axe from the Lords
as many of the hereditary peers as could be managed. In 2009, New Labour created the Supreme Court
of the United Kingdom and the House of Lords ceased to be vested with judicial
functions, the lords of appeal in ordinary then in office concurrently appointed
as Supreme Court judges and excluded from the Lords until their retirement from
the bench.
Sibyl, Lady Colefax (1874–1950) was an English socialite
and interior decorator who in the 1930s & 1940s followed the tradition of
hosting “Ordinaries” at London’s Dorchester Hotel, small lunch parties with a
set menu, after which she would invoice the guests for their meal. In the restaurant trade, an “ordinary” was a
lunch or dinner in which all courses were included at the one fixed price per
head (as opposed to à la carte service).
Because Lady Colefax essentially “bought in bulk” and the menu was what
would now be understood as a “chef’s choice”, the prices were good and her
address book was the envy of London society so the company was always amusing
and occasionally illustrious. In his infamously
indiscrete diaries, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897–1958) would sometimes
refer to her as “Old Coalbox” but most of the entries about her were affectionate
and sympathetic.
