What's the difference between mediocre and ordinary?

Mediocre


Definition:

  • (a.) Of a middle quality; of but a moderate or low degree of excellence; indifferent; ordinary.
  • (n.) A mediocre person.
  • (n.) A young monk who was excused from performing a portion of a monk's duties.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The interobserver variability of these indices is low (r greater than 0.96); reproducibility is good in patients with sinus rhythm but mediocre in atrial fibrillation.
  • (2) Only a few weeks ago he described English education as “mediocre”.
  • (3) This is a community where readers' patience for mediocrity is measured in seconds not minutes," added Thomson, the former Times editor who moved to New York to run the WSJ at the end of 2007 following Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the paper's publisher, Dow Jones.
  • (4) The hospital laboratory was asked to provide for diffractometric analysis samples of the "mediocre" semens of quality similar enough to the "control" ones what concerns the percentage of motile spermatozoa (40 percent) and spermatozoan concentration.
  • (5) The unprecedented stimuli provided by central banks has kept activity ticking over, but proved unable to lift the global economy out of what Lagarde calls “the new mediocre”.
  • (6) I'm sure that advisers are at fault: mediocre people with PR degrees, eagerly advising on how to avoid the resentment of the masses.
  • (7) The value of conventional non-invasive methods is limited by a high failure rate (standard echocardiography in patients with chronic respiratory disease), a mediocre sensitivity, notably in detecting moderate PAH (electrocardiography, radiography of the chest, myocardial thalium scintigraphy) or a poor specificity (isotopic angiography).
  • (8) From the endocrine point of view, the mediocre prognosis is aggravated by high energy radiotherapy.
  • (9) The mediocre results among the group of inoperable patients suggest that other chemotherapy protocols need to be tested.
  • (10) This grid, used for the analysis of 527 randomized trials, showed that about one-half of them were of mediocre quality, the most frequent defects encountered being the multiplicity of assessment criteria, the lack of description of the subjects excluded, the absence of calculation of the number of subjects required before starting the trial and the small number of subjects in trials with non-significant results.
  • (11) Negative and mediocre results were more frequent in cases of gonarthrosis.
  • (12) Its contribution is obviously essential when, for technical reasons, arterial opacification is only mediocre (extended angiocardiopneumography).
  • (13) Stock Woolstencroft , architects of the dismal Stratford towers, are attempting to continue their march of mediocrity with schemes on the other side of the park.
  • (14) All the interviews supported the notion of an arbitrary norm for pay, which almost all firms felt was grossly and inappropriately high … The general view of search firms is that a lower norm would not materially affect what happens.” One headhunter said: “I think there are an awful lot of FTSE 100 CEOs who are pretty mediocre.” Another added: “I think that the wage drift over the past 10 years, or the salary drift, has been inexcusable, incomprehensible, and it is very serious for the social fabric of the country.” The findings are being made public just as an analysis by the High Pay Centre thinktank shows that the average pay of a chief executive – including pensions, share options and bonuses – stands at about £4.6m.
  • (15) A mediocre succession of atria and galleries, it does at least give artists space.
  • (16) Such has been the generally mediocre standard of Woods' play over the last two years, he has had perhaps only half a dozen realistic chances of winning on Sunday afternoon.
  • (17) This would happen especially if the school inspectorate Ofsted found they were failing, mediocre, fragile or coasting.
  • (18) For the svengali of mediocrity decreed that every year would culminate in the release of a single from the winner of his X Factor, and that this contribution to the lexicon would dutifully top the charts.
  • (19) Chemicals on the loop were Ca (abundant); Mg (marked); Si (mediocre); Ab, Ba, Fe (insignificant); Mn, Mo, Zn, P (trace).
  • (20) While the Lakers' two-year contract extension may end up being "an expensive mediocrity overpaying a franchise star in decline", as Grantland's Zach Lowe has put it , it could also have very well been the only move it could have sold to its fans.

Ordinary


Definition:

  • (a.) According to established order; methodical; settled; regular.
  • (a.) Common; customary; usual.
  • (a.) Of common rank, quality, or ability; not distinguished by superior excellence or beauty; hence, not distinguished in any way; commonplace; inferior; of little merit; as, men of ordinary judgment; an ordinary book.
  • (n.) An officer who has original jurisdiction in his own right, and not by deputation.
  • (n.) One who has immediate jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical; an ecclesiastical judge; also, a deputy of the bishop, or a clergyman appointed to perform divine service for condemned criminals and assist in preparing them for death.
  • (n.) A judicial officer, having generally the powers of a judge of probate or a surrogate.
  • (n.) The mass; the common run.
  • (n.) That which is so common, or continued, as to be considered a settled establishment or institution.
  • (n.) Anything which is in ordinary or common use.
  • (n.) A dining room or eating house where a meal is prepared for all comers, at a fixed price for the meal, in distinction from one where each dish is separately charged; a table d'hote; hence, also, the meal furnished at such a dining room.
  • (n.) A charge or bearing of simple form, one of nine or ten which are in constant use. The bend, chevron, chief, cross, fesse, pale, and saltire are uniformly admitted as ordinaries. Some authorities include bar, bend sinister, pile, and others. See Subordinary.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The conus was found to contribute little to forward flow under ordinary circumstances, but its contribution increased greatly during bleeding or partial occlusion of the truncus.
  • (2) We set a new basic plane on an orthopantomogram in order to measure the gonial angle and obtained the following: 1) Usable error difference in ordinary clinical setting ranged from 0.5 degrees-1.0 degree.
  • (3) The indication of the DNA probe method would be considered in the four cases as follows, 1. necessity of the special equipment to isolate the pathogen, 2. necessity of the long period to isolate the pathogen, 3. existence of the cross reaction among the pathogen and relative organisms in the immunological procedure, 4. existence of the difficulty to identify the species of the pathogen by the ordinary procedure.
  • (4) So we concluded that duplications and accessories should be thought to have similar meanings with the ordinary branching patterns of MCA in the occurrence of aneurysms.
  • (5) Although the reeler, an autosomal recessive mutant mouse with the abnormality of lamination in the central nervous system, died about 3 weeks of age when fed ordinary laboratory chow, this mouse could grow up normally and prolong its destined, short lifespan to 50 weeks and more when given assistance in taking paste food and water from the weaning period.
  • (6) Our knowledge of the pathogenesis of ordinary baldness is far from complete but a genetic predisposition is necessary and androgen production must be present.
  • (7) Ordinary details that any mother would recognise have been magnified into major problems.
  • (8) A simple method for distinction between RNA- and DNA-containing structures in aldehyde- and osmiumtextroxide-fixed electron microscopic autoradiographs (or ordinary thin sections) is described: the developer and the acetic acid used for processing autoradiographs extract selectively uranium acetate from DNA containing-structures which, after staining with lead citrate, leads to a characteristically 'bleached' appearance of the DNA.
  • (9) We have the president of the tribunal, Sir Michael Burton, arguing that his work needs to be done in secret to secure the trust and co-operation of the intelligence services – but what about the trust of the British people and the confidence of the lawyers who seek to establish the rights of ordinary members of the public?
  • (10) A £100,000 bronze statue of an ordinary family, the Joneses, will be unveiled in a prime spot outside the city’s library which opened last year.
  • (11) The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said Heydon had “got it wrong” in his decision and had “not really approached this as an ordinary, fair-minded person would”.
  • (12) All plasma porphyrins could be protected for several days from similar photodegradation by performing all blood drawing, processing, and assay procedures under ordinary red-incandescent illumination, and by storage in the dark.
  • (13) These blocks may be responsible for the substantial differences between the ordinary and Andean strains at the symptom and aphid transmissibility levels.
  • (14) Young people from ordinary working families that are struggling to get by.” Labour said Greening’s department had deliberately excluded the poorest families from her calculations to make access to grammar schools seem fairer and accused her of “fiddling the figures”.
  • (15) Both by direct plate counts of survivors and by quantitative ultraviolet spectrophotometric analyses of released cellular constituents, the respiration-impaired mutants were less vulnerable to the destructive actions of the basic proteins than were ordinary wild-type cells.
  • (16) We fought back and we won,” she said, boasting that the CFPB had already recouped $4bn for ordinary people from major financial institutions.
  • (17) Patients with all forms of angina, stable effort and unstable rest angina, and those with coronary artery spasm have very frequent episodes of silent myocardial ischemia during ordinary activity.
  • (18) Normal male ICR mice were divided into a cafeteria diet group (CC) and an ordinary chow group (Cont).
  • (19) The approach also emphasises the self-evident fact that the voices of ordinary citizens, using our lived experiences to motivate others, are the most powerful tools for building relationships and mobilising a wider movement of support.
  • (20) People like Hugo forgot how truly miserable Paris had been for ordinary Parisians.” Out of a job and persona non grata in Paris, Haussmann spent six months in Italy to lift his spirits.