Prosaic means plain and dull, with nothing imaginative about it. A prosaic explanation, prosaic and practical, rather prosaic.
The commonest use is faintly deflating: the prosaic explanation is the boring true one, as against the exciting theory. The word simply means in prose, from the old contrast with the elevation of poetry.
1adjectiveprosaicPlain and dull, with nothing imaginative about it.
“Her poems are beautiful, but her letters are surprisingly prosaic, full of shopping lists and weather.”
prosaic is a quality.
Latin prosaicus means in prose, from prosa, straightforward speech.
Proto-Indo-European
*wer- — to turn, to bend
itc-ola
provorsus — straight ahead
Latin
prosa — prose
Medieval Latin
prosaicus — in prose
Middle French
prosaïque
English, today
prosaic
Built from
From Middle French prosaïque, from Medieval Latin prosaicus (“in prose”), from Latin prosa (“prose”), from prorsus (“straightforward, in prose”), from itc-ola provorsus (“straight ahead”), from pro- (“forward”) + vorsus (“turned”), from vertō (“to turn”), from Proto-Indo-European wer- (“to turn, to bend”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA