Common misconception about the use of the word "common"

SammyF · June 2009

While most people seem to hold the mistaken belief that "common" is word used to describe something that you've encountered once in your life and therefore taken as the annecdotal basis for creating a broad generalization, Webster's dictionary actually defines it as an adjective of Latin origins meaning:

1 a: of or relating to a community at large : public <work for the common good> b: known to the community <common nuisances>
2 a: belonging to or shared by two or more individuals or things or by all members of a group <a common friend> <buried in a common grave> b: belonging equally to two or more mathematical entities <triangles with a common base> c: having two or more branches <common carotid artery>
3 a: occurring or appearing frequently : familiar <a common sight> b: of the best known or most frequently seen kind —used especially of plants and animals <the common housefly> c: vernacular 2 <common names>
4 a: widespread, general <common knowledge> b: characterized by a lack of privilege or special status <common people> c: just satisfying accustomed criteria : elementary <common decency>
5 a: falling below ordinary standards : second-rate b: lacking refinement : coarse
6: denoting nominal relations by a single linguistic form that in a more highly inflected language might be denoted by two or more different forms <common gender> <common case>
7: of, relating to, or being common stock

The two themes within these definitions can be described by words that share it's etymological root: community, meaning a broader collection of individuals with similar backgrounds or beliefs, and communal, meaning shared by more than one person. So you can't say that something is common when actually it's a generalization based of a single annecdotal instance because nothing can be common if there is only one instance, or if it's a generalization synthesized from several different beliefs.

Or I suppose you CAN claim that's an appropriate way to use the word "common," but that'd be like me saying there's an appopriate way to use a strawman in an argument. Because that's what you're doing. By taking one idea and attributing it to the populace at large, you can then refute it and say "look because I attributed a wrong-headed belief to the populace at large and then shot it down I am obviously smarter than all the rest of you stupid fucks."

And obviously that's just moronic.