Other forms: commons, commoner
Common means there is a lot of it about. Sparrows are common, Smith is a common surname, and that's a common mistake is what someone says to stop you feeling stupid.
The second big sense is shared: common ground, a common language, a common ancestor, the common room at a school, something held in common. From there come the common people, the House of Commons, and common land — the field a whole village could graze animals on, which is why so many English towns have a Common. Common sense is the practical judgement everybody is supposed to have. Watch one British trap: calling a person common is an insult about class, and means vulgar. And the opposite shifts with the sense — common and rare for how much of it there is, common and individual for how it is shared.
1adjectivecommonHappening a lot, or found in many places.~59%
“Rain in June is common here.”
synonyms: widespread, frequent
3adjectiveordinaryOrdinary, of no special rank or quality.~2%
“It was a common soldier who noticed the gap in the wall.”
4adjectivelowVulgar or low-class in manner, in disapproving British use.~2%
“Her mother thought the new neighbours were common and said so at dinner.”
5nounareaAn area of open land that anyone in a village may use.~2%
“They walked the dog on the common every evening.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: ordinary, usual
Common came through Middle English comun and Anglo-Norman from Latin commūnis — common, public, general — which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-moy-ni-s, held in common, from a root *mey- meaning to exchange. Sharing is the older idea, and frequency followed it, since whatever everyone shares is what you see everywhere. It pushed out the native English word ġemǣne, though a worn-down piece of that survives as mean.
Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (change)
Middle English
comun
English, today
common
Built from
From Middle English comun. From Middle English comun, from Anglo-Norman comun, from Old French comun (rare in the Gallo-Romance languages, but reinforced as a Carolingian calque of Proto-West Germanic gamainī (“common”) in Old French -), from Latin commūnis (“common, public, general”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱom-moy-ni-s (“held in common”), from Proto-Indo-European mey- (“to exchange, change”). Displaced native Middle English imene, ȝemǣne (“common, general, universal”) (from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English mene, mǣne (“mean, common”) (also from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English samen, somen (“in common, together”) (from Old English samen (“together”)). a doublet of gmina and mean.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA