What's the difference between banal and bland?

Banal


Definition:

  • (a.) Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The problem is no longer that it's brazen, but that it's banal.
  • (2) The banalities of a news conference take on a strange significance when the men who summon the world's cameras are members of a feared insurgent group that banned television when they ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al-Qaida.
  • (3) As human papilloma virus type 5 is known to have malignant potential, clinicians should be on the lookout for these banal-looking and distinctly non-warty lesions in renal transplant recipients.
  • (4) But neither Jalili nor any other candidate has so far offered much in the election other than banalities – despite Iran's mounting problems, which now centre on the reduction of oil exports from 2.2m barrels a day to 1.1m in the past year due to tightening western sanctions.
  • (5) Most of the macroscopically visible abnormalities of the placenta are of no functional significance, the major exception to this general banality being the uncommon large haemangioma which can cause complications in the mother, fetus and neonate.
  • (6) He does this quite a lot, and even fairly banal details about his personal life are injuncted the moment they're out of his mouth, which is frustrating but unsurprising, given his publicity-shy reputation.
  • (7) Instead a banally labelled Office for Students (OfS) is to be created.
  • (8) Achebe's writing isn't anything as banal as cultural relativism – something he has been accused of – but a powerful refutation of the fact that before the white man, Africa was a "blank sheet of civilisation".
  • (9) So Zhou Enlai’s famous reply was actually quite banal – yet is now universally reinterpreted as a gem of sempiternal Chinese wisdom.
  • (10) And, at a time when Apple was essentially reinventing home electronics, Fiorina’s spectacularly banal mission statement was, “ Invent ” which is probably why we’re not all calling all tablets “H-Pads” today.
  • (11) There is indeed evidence to indicate that signaling molecules involved in cellular communication are 'banalized': that means that their receptors are liable to be expressed in almost any tissue by a wide variety of cells.
  • (12) Particular difficulty was experienced with small (less than 5 mm), flat lesions, which can be banal or potentially malignant.
  • (13) “One could clearly see from the evidence presented that Mladić, Karadžić and others from the Serb leadership of the time were not mythical characters – neither monsters, as the Bosniak victim narrative paints them, nor heroes and “fathers of the nation” as they are presented by the dominant Serb politic – but banal, self-centred opportunists drunk on the unchecked power to command lives and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
  • (14) Alternatively, might it not suggest that quite apart from banal, administrative, bureaucratic "filtering" – routine chucking out cases sent by applicants many years after a final domestic disposal, or without any domestic proceedings having been undertaken – the court is already making extensive use of highly discretionary concepts such as "manifestly ill-founded" to pre-judge the interest of its caseload, and is already selecting cases which it regards as "serious" or "important"?
  • (15) It's a trajectory that is on the one hand explainable, even banal.
  • (16) It looks as if someone, in a great hurry, has crammed details of the most banal US shopping mall design of the late 1980s and more recent Chinese design into a laptop in their student bedsit, pressed the "print" button and then, unbelievably, convinced someone, in an equal hurry, to build them.
  • (17) Occasionally, Sting sings in the sort of broad Newcastle accent he has never revealed before, the one he has previously felt placed him back in the small terraced street he grew up in, a place he once described as an "enclave of banality".
  • (18) As for bacterial pneumonias they usually present as an acute lobar pneumonia with a banal organism but severe gram negative pneumonias are possible justifying a detailed systematic approach in certain cases.
  • (19) That is why May should throw away the banalities and try to address a fundamental truth.
  • (20) Therefore it is very important to inform all patients and their parents about the low, but lifelong risk of infection following splenectomy in order to begin the antibiotic therapy as soon as possible even in cases of banal infections.

Bland


Definition:

  • (a.) Mild; soft; gentle; smooth and soothing in manner; suave; as, a bland temper; bland persuasion; a bland sycophant.
  • (a.) Having soft and soothing qualities; not drastic or irritating; not stimulating; as, a bland oil; a bland diet.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For further education, this would be my priority: a substantial increase in funding and an end to tinkering with the form of qualifications and bland repetition of the “parity of esteem” trope.
  • (2) Reoperation was more frequent after valve replacement with bioprostheses (6.7% per patient year) than after valvuloplasty (4.3% per patient year) and after mechanical valve replacement (1.5% per patient year; P less than 0.02), and was necessitated mainly by residual or recurrent valve dysfunction after valvuloplasty, bland or infected periprosthetic leaks in mechanical valves and degradation of bioprostheses.
  • (3) "Everyone calls him the Socialist Worker Padre," one bland senior cleric told me with a sly and dismissive laugh.
  • (4) ABNORMALITIES OF THE CERVICAL EPITHELIUM ARE SET OUT IN TWO MAIN GROUPS: bland lesions which are regarded as unrelated to malignancy, and malign lesions which are considered as potential precursors of invasive carcinoma.
  • (5) Embolization with avitene, PVA and ethanol induced a more bland histological reaction than the one observed with IBCA.
  • (6) Sir Christopher Bland, the former BBC chairman, told the BBC News channel the allegations were "very serious" but warned against jumping to conclusions about Rippon stepping aside.
  • (7) Among pro-independence people there are widespread concerns that if the SNP moves too quickly on a referendum it will cast the choice in the often bland New Labour-ish terms it uses for everyday politics – and thus deprive Scotland of a crucial opportunity to discuss its future, as well as threatening their chances of winning.
  • (8) But blandness in public should not be mistaken for blandness of character, and there are signs that she is beginning to emerge from the passive role she has been playing.
  • (9) Most examples measure less than or equal to 0.5 cm and are composed of a partially encapsulated mass of bland Schwann cells and innumerable tiny axons arranged in interlacing fascicles.
  • (10) His neutralisation strategy has amounted to little more than bland statements of support and efforts to keep the NHS out of the news.
  • (11) He is a regular panellist on comedy news quizzes, and reaches for Wodehouse in depicting 70s foreign secretary Lord Home "playing Lord Emsworth to Heath's Empress of Blandings".
  • (12) Pathologic examination of the orbital breast metastases revealed two types: an adenocarcinomatous pattern with nests of pleomorphic malignant appearing cells and a histiocytoid variant with bland, large cells similar to histiocytes.
  • (13) Unfortunately, the commercials are so bland and empty that they’re almost certainly doomed to failure.
  • (14) Much of the time he sounds bland, monotonal, bobbing gently along.
  • (15) The frequency of major events during follow-up (thromboembolism, anticoagulant related hemorrhage, bland perivalvular leak and prosthetic valve endocarditis) were similar, but the frequency of primary tissue valve failure was markedly different for the two valves (1.1% per patient-year for Ionescu-Shiley valves and 5.9% for the Hancock valve).
  • (16) A bland vasculopathic process resulting from metabolic or immunologic disturbances appears to be the best explanation for this new syndrome, which has previously been recognized only in Japan.
  • (17) The anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery (Bland-White-Garland Syndrome) is a rare congenital malformation reported to occur in 0.25-0.5% of all congenital cardiac anomalies.
  • (18) He recommends not a bland and stimulus-free environment, but one whose elements are unobtrusive and unambiguous.
  • (19) David Bell will be online this afternoon at 4.15pm to answer your points at www.EducationGuardian.co.uk Changing faces of Ofsted Stewart Sutherland 1992-1994 Sutherland was criticised for a slow start and bland inspections.
  • (20) Two deceptively benign-appearing, unclassifiable but very similar fibromyxoid sarcomas characterized histologically by bland, innocuous-appearing fibroblastic cells and a swirling, whorled growth pattern are presented.