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DictionaryRoot: -ité
French

-ité

a quality or state

Forms

  • -ité
  • -ity — The usual English form of this borrowed ending.

Origin

Latin -itas, ‘quality; state,’ through its grammatical form -itatem.

Note

The resulting noun names a quality without saying how much of it someone has.

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A bored gallery visitor surveys several nearly identical, uninspired sunset paintings: the same orange sun, flat horizon, and lone palm tree repeated with only trivial differences.
noun

banality

buh-NAL-uh-tee/bəˈnæləti/

The dullness of something obvious and unoriginal.

Etymology
banOld Frenchdecree, legal control
+alFrenchconnected with
+ityFrencha quality or state

The legal-control root reached 'commonplace' through feudal shared facilities or compulsory service, then the idea 'open to everyone.' The quality suffix makes banality the state of being ordinary to the point of triteness.

Full entry

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