the.com/banality
Evil's favorite disguise is a shrug, not a sneer.
means The quality of being so ordinary, stale, and predictable that it's dull — the flatness of a thing with no original spark left in it.
from Comes from French 'banal,' which originally meant something compulsory and communal — like the village mill, oven, or bull that feudal tenants were all required to use. Since everyone had to use the same one thing, 'banal' drifted toward meaning 'common to everyone' and then, inevitably, 'common' in the dull sense — worn smooth by overuse until nothing distinctive remained.
- origin
- Hannah Arendt coined banality of evil, 1963
- subject
- Eichmann, who seemed boringly bureaucratic, not monstrous
- insight
- atrocity often runs on paperwork, not passion
- irony
- the word itself sounds duller than it is