Word To Use Today: mediocre.

 In a world of terror, strife, and people trying to sell us AMAZING things, The Word Den finds itself full of affection for mediocrity.

For things that are just good enough. Stuff that'll do. The adequate, the unexceptional, the blandly competent.

Not an intricately-devised tasting menu of twelve courses, but a supermarket sandwich. No massive array of hot-house flowers, but some daffodils happily dumped in a jam jar.

A phone that just makes phone calls. Someone or something I don't have to bother to analyse or praise. Someone just doing the job.

In short, the mediocre.

The word has an interesting derivation, too.

Word To Use Today: mediocre. Well, yes, the medi- part of the word comes quite boringly from the Latin medius, which means middle, but the -ocre bit comes from the Latin word ocris, which means stony mountain. So something mediocre is halfway up the mountain.

photo by Tim Rains

Hope you're on the sunny side.