typical
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]- typicall (obsolete)
Etymology
[edit]From Late Latin typicalis, from Latin typicus (“typical”), from Ancient Greek τυπικός (tupikós, “of or pertaining to a type, conformable, typical”), from τύπος (túpos, “mark, impression, type”), equivalent to typic + -al and type + -ical.
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈtɪp.ɪ.kəl/, [ˈtɪp.ɪ.kəɫ], [ˈtɪp.ɪ.kɫ̩]
Audio (Southern California): (file)
- Hyphenation: typ‧i‧cal
Adjective
[edit]typical (comparative more typical, superlative most typical)
- Capturing the overall sense of a thing.
- Characteristically representing something by form, group, idea or type.
- Hyponym: emblematic
- 2010, Göran Grimvall, “Chapter 1: Numbers”, in Quantify! A Crash Course in Smart Thinking, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN:
- Compare this with, for instance, the heights of adult humans. They certainly lie within half an order of magnitude from a mean of about 1.7 m, being within the interval 5.4–0.54 m (18–1.8 ft). It is obvious from our three examples—the height of a person, household income in the United States, and the area of EU countries—that the concept of what is typical or characteristic depends on the case one refers to. Nevertheless, even vague measures can have a useful meaning in a comparison with something that is very different. For instance, the area of EU countries is typically much larger than the area of the city of New York, although Malta is actually smaller.
- Normal, average; to be expected.
- 1989 February 6 [1989 February 4], “Spring Festival”, in Daily Report: China, number 023, sourced from Beijing CHINA DAILY p 4, →ISSN, →OCLC, National Affairs, page 30, column 1:
- Also perpetual is the practice of extending greetings and best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.
The most typical traditional greeting is gong xi fa cai (for prosperity). And it certainly has been the most appropriate one since China in late 1978 denounced the political upheaval of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and launched its large-scale reform and development programmes.
- 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion[1]:
- One typical Grecian kiln engorged one thousand muleloads of juniper wood in a single burn. Fifty such kilns would devour six thousand metric tons of trees and brush annually.
- (taxonomy) Of a lower taxon, containing the type of the higher taxon.
- 2013 September 9, Raymond G. Gagné, John C. Moser, “The North American gall midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) of hackberries (Cannabaceae: Celtis spp.)”, in Memoirs of the American Entomological Society, volume 49:
- Celticecis species are definitely known only from the typical subgenus of Celtis, distributed through much of the Holarctic Region.
Synonyms
[edit]- See also Thesaurus:common
Antonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]capturing the overall sense of a thing
|
characteristically representing something
|
normal; to be expected
See also
[edit]Noun
[edit]typical (plural typicals)
- Anything that is typical, normal, or standard.
- Antipsychotic drugs can be divided into typicals and atypicals.
- Among the moths, typicals were more common than melanics.
Further reading
[edit]- “typical”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “typical”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
Anagrams
[edit]Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)tewp-
- English terms derived from Late Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English terms suffixed with -al
- English terms suffixed with -ical
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- en:Taxonomy
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples