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It seems that even CEDICT is full of the common English usage mistake confusing the adjective "everyday" with the adverbial phrase "every day". This means many dictionary sites and apps such as Pleco are also infested with this error.

Wiktionary, on the other hand, is still missing Chinese translations for many of the synonyms of "everyday". I don't have access right now to a quality bilingual dictionary.

So, which Chinese terms are the best for the correct sense of English "everyday", which means "commonplace, mundane, ordinary, quotidian, unremarkable, etc"?

I feel it might be 日常 but there's so much poor literacy in the public-edited dictionaries that I can't trust them.

hippietrail
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    http://www.iciba.com/everyday – user6065 Feb 22 '19 at 19:35
  • http://dict.youdao.com I recommend this – Voyager Feb 22 '19 at 22:46
  • list of dictionarys: https://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/1195/43 – Voyager Feb 22 '19 at 23:25
  • @rambler: The Youdao definitions seem fine but every one of the examples are wrong, demonstrating the adverb "every day" misspelled as the adjective "everyday". – hippietrail Feb 23 '19 at 04:09
  • @user6065: Iciba has a wrong example in the 四级真题 section unless it is explaining a common error to watch out for, but I don't think it is. All the rest looks correct though. – hippietrail Feb 23 '19 at 04:12
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    @hippietrail commonplace（凡庸）mundane（平淡）ordinary（普通）quotidian（繁复）unremarkable（微末、不足为道）I think it is a coincidence that character 凡 and 繁 match the intrinsic meanings of everyday – Toosky Hierot Feb 23 '19 at 04:27
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    @hippietrail Everyday as an adjective can mean both "daily" and "commonplace," I'm not sure what the issue is, see: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/everyday – Mou某 Feb 23 '19 at 07:19
  • @user3306356: Yes it does have both meanings, but in the English on that page I objected to "Well, it happens everyday to high schoolers." that is not what we see. It is clearly being used adverbially, which is an error. – hippietrail Feb 23 '19 at 09:36

2 Answers2

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“日常” is the closest in most contexts. It conveys the sense of "commonplace, mundane" very well.

Some example phrases: everyday life - 日常生活 everyday conversation - 日常对话/日常会话 everyday clothes - 日常服装

It can also be used as a noun: 我厌倦了重复的日常 (I grew tired of my repetitive everyday life)

Ben Yang
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I looked over the CC-CEDICT entries containing either "every day" or "everyday", and didn't notice any erroneous usage. Certainly not to the extent that you could say it's "infested with this error".

Perhaps you assumed the following entry must be wrong: 每天 [mei3 tian1] /every day/everyday/. But 每天 can be used as a noun ("every day"), adverb ("every day") or adjective ("everyday").

For example: ADVERB: 毛巾每天更换 Towels are changed every day. ADJECTIVE: 在家庭成员每天的习惯中培养孩子的双语能力 Bilingualism stems from everyday habits at home.

Also, it should be noted that CC-CEDICT is a Chinese-English dictionary, whereas you appear to need an English-Chinese dictionary. CC-CEDICT is not designed for people who want the Chinese equivalent of an English word.

Various Chinese words can be used to mean "everyday", but some of them are best used in particular contexts. Examples of different contexts: "everyday occurrence", "everyday life", "everyday expressions", "everyday routine". The Chinese word that can be used in more contexts than any other is probably 日常.

Gordon
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