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How do you pronounce banal?
There are several pronunciations of banal, but the three most common are \BAY-nul\, \buh-NAHL\, and \buh-NAL\ (which rhymes with canal). The earliest pronunciation given in our dictionaries is the now-unused \BAN-ul\ (rhymes with flannel); it is attested to in our dictionaries back to the 1800s, but has dropped out of use. \BAY-nul\ is the next oldest pronunciation. The more recent \buh-NAL\ and \buh-NAHL\ came about through French influence, since banal was borrowed into English from French, and those two pronunciations are closer to the French pronunciation of banal. All three pronunciations are acceptable in educated speech; \buh-NAL\ is currently the most common, followed by \BAY-nul\ and then \buh-NAHL\. There is no reason to condemn any of them as incorrect.
Synonyms
Examples of banal in a Sentence
Don DeLillo, Mao II, 1991
The instructor's script is banal, relying heavily on images of waves on a beach or clouds in the sky.
—Maxine Kumin, "Wintering Over," 1979,
in In Deep, 1987
… it seemed to me that computers have been used in ways that are salutary, in ways that are dangerous, banal and cruel, and in ways that seem harmless if a little silly.
—Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, 1981
He made some banal remarks about the weather.
The writing was banal but the story was good.
Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 22 Nov. 2024
The long passages of banal detail in Murakami’s fiction are a sort of ballast, anchoring his precipitous swerves into the fantastic.
—Bailey Trela, Vulture, 19 Nov. 2024
For the installation-performance hybrid, guests were directed to the exhibition space, a waiting room replica, by ushers who never returned to collect them, producing the banal anxiety of liminal, unstructured time.
—Phoebe Chen, ARTnews.com, 22 Oct. 2024
The streets of heaped districts, where evil became banal and mercy perished, now is home to ‘devils’ and ‘demons’.
—Zac Ntim, Deadline, 10 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for banal 
Dictionary Entries Near banal
Cite this Entry
“Banal.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banal. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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Medical Definition
banal
adjective
ba-
-ˈnȧl; bā-ˈnal; ˈbān-ᵊl
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