What's the difference between banal and mundane?

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.

Mundane


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the world; worldly; earthly; terrestrial; as, the mundane sphere.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But most instances are more mundane: the majority of fraud cases in recent years have emerged from scientists either falsifying images – deliberately mislabelling scans and micrographs – or fabricating or altering their recorded data.
  • (2) This morning he has mundane tasks to attend to – the logistics of players’ luggage for Basel – but the man they call Monchi is the sporting director and the architect who transformed the club.
  • (3) This requirement is one that Americans comply with every day to engage in mundane activities like cashing a check, opening a bank account or boarding a plane,” said Reed Clay, a special assistant under Abbott.
  • (4) The low number of scorable dream reports collected did not reveal a heightened incidence of "masochistic" or "negative" content, indeed were rather mundane.
  • (5) Today's demands are more mundane: hostage-takers range from single mothers to the nearly retired - they want jobs, proper pay and no brutal layoffs.
  • (6) Recent research in Delhi has revealed more mundane causes for high levels of violence and harassment.
  • (7) Finally, Guardian sports reporter turned ace observationalist Josh Widdicombe has the ability to find the sparkle in the mundane that puts him in line to become the next Sean Lock.
  • (8) Our current understanding of these disease processes is discussed in an effort to review the current status of both the mundane and the esoteric infections of the kidney.
  • (9) The perhaps disappointingly mundane answer, however, lies in a television programme.
  • (10) What seems the epitome of mundane routine for the average British commuter is being seen as near miraculous in a city where, like Los Angeles, the car is king and the train is nowhere in sight when navigating the sprawling suburbs.
  • (11) Many organisms construct structural ceramic (biomineral) composites from seemingly mundane materials; cell-mediated processes control both the nucleation and growth of mineral and the development of composite microarchitecture.
  • (12) In any case, Caine’s interest was piqued by more mundane matters: it was the first time he had been asked to play a conductor.
  • (13) Modern research has confirmed that memories for emotionally intense situations are unusually vivid and detailed, but it has also shown that they are no more accurate than mundane memories.
  • (14) These are the same mundane, bureaucratic factors that conspired to prevent any kind of action in Rwanda , 20 years ago.
  • (15) Published in their original handwritten form, the minutes of meetings of the Bank’s Court of Directors from 1914 to 45 , and of another key decision-making body, the Committee of the Treasury, from 1914 to 1931 , reveal a rich interweaving of the Earth-shattering and the mundane, which carried several echoes of the most recent crisis period of 2007-09 – minutes from which were released by the Bank on Tuesday.
  • (16) I think it’s useless to be afraid, actually … I believe that when you do things, when you decide an action, any fear goes away because action is stronger than fear.” Back in Moscow there are more mundane problems to worry about.
  • (17) Jimmy McGovern's saga of the ill-fated residents of The Street was similarly afflicted, despite its pedigree, as was Broadchurch, the unremitting Southcliffe and Prey, the recent Mancunian take on The Fugitive which managed to be both far-fetched and gruellingly mundane.
  • (18) In Scott & Bailey , for example, a good deal of the police work is mundane and the characters are bedevilled by the kinds of real-life domestic troubles that normally receive little more than lip service in police procedure.
  • (19) To the casual observer, emails between CIA staff and Bigelow's team have a somewhat mundane quality to them, though they do suggest a certain fanboyesque enthusiasm for the Hollywood project.
  • (20) Although rare, eosinophilic granuloma can be associated with cutaneous lesions, sometimes isolated and mundane in appearance.