run-of-the-mill

run-of-the-mill

Common, standard, or average; mediocre. It was a run-of-the-mill action movie—fine to kill a couple hours, but nothing special. I must say, for how many interesting points you bring up in class, your paper is rather run-of-the-mill.

run-of-the-mill

common or average; typical. The restaurant we went to was nothing special—just run-of-the mill. The service was good, but the food was run-of-the-mill or worse.

run of the mill

Ordinary, average, as in There's nothing special about these singers-they're just run of the mill. This expression alludes to fabrics coming directly from a mill without having been sorted or inspected for quality. It has survived such similar phrases as run of the mine and run of the kiln, for the products of mines and kilns. [Late 1800s]

See also: mill, of, run

run-of-the-mill

COMMON You use run-of-the-mill to describe something or someone that is ordinary and not at all exciting. It was just run-of-the-mill TV movie stuff. The food was fairly run-of-the-mill. I was just a very average, run-of-the-mill kind of student. Note: This expression may be using the image of a watermill making the same movements continuously and regularly so long as the flow of water stays the same. Another suggestion is that it comes from the use of `run-of-the-mill' in the United States as a term for timber which has been sawn at a sawmill but has not yet been graded.

run of the mill

the ordinary or undistinguished type.

In this expression, the run is literally the material produced from a mill before it has been sorted or inspected for quality.

See also: mill, of, run

ˌrun-of-the-ˈmill

(often disapproving) ordinary, with no special or interesting features: a run-of-the-mill job

run-of-the-mill

mod. average; typical. (Referring to the typical quality of a product that comes out of a mill.) This stuff is just run-of-the-mill.

run of the mill

An ordinary, uneventful sequence of events. The run in this term refers to a mill’s average output, before it has been graded or sorted. Also stated as run of the mine or the kiln, these terms come from the late nineteenth century. They began to be used figuratively in the twentieth century, as in “A darned sight better-looking than the run of the mill wives” (Hearst’s International, 1930). It is also written run-of-the-mill.

See also: mill, of, run