Other forms: routines
Your routine is the set of things you do the same way every day, in the same order. Kettle on, radio on, two slices of toast, out of the door at ten past eight.
Routine is an adjective too, and it means nothing special is going on: a routine check-up, a routine question, routine maintenance on the boiler. In dance and gymnastics a routine is a fixed sequence of moves practised until the body does it without being asked, and a comedian's routine is the set of jokes they perform. You get into a routine, stick to a routine, and break your routine when the holidays start. Routinely means as a regular thing — they routinely check the meters in March. A routine is not dull by definition, though the daily routine leans that way; when you mean dull, the word you want is boring.
1nounroutineA fixed way of doing things, repeated in the same order each time.~19%
“His morning routine never changes: coffee, the news, then the dog.”
2adjectivestandardDone as a normal part of the job, not because anything is wrong.~56%
“It was a routine inspection; they do one every six months.”
3nounsetA set sequence of moves or jokes performed in front of an audience.~25%
“She practised the floor routine until she could do it with her eyes shut.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
routine is a pattern of behaviour.
Routine is the French word route with an ending stuck on it: the path you take. Behind route stands Latin rupta via, a way broken through the ground. A routine is exactly that — a track worn by walking it over and over, until it takes you where it goes without any steering from you.
Latin
rupta via
English, today
routine
From routine. by surface analysis, route + -ine. Further from Latin rupta via. Compare typologically travel << tripālium, whence also travail, note the inverse semantic vector from a subjective state (toil) to an objective action (journey). Also compare běžný (< běžet), обихо́д, обихо́дный (akin to ходи́ть).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA