Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
from un- (1) "not" + exceptional (adj.).
Wiktionary
a. 1 Not exceptional 2 acceptable 3 average 4 mundane 5 plain
WordNet
adj. not special in any way; "run-of-the-mill boxing"; "your run-of-the-mine college graduate"; "a unexceptional an incident as can be found in a lawyer's career" [syn: run-of-the-mill, run-of-the-mine, mine run]
Usage examples of "unexceptional".
The word was unexceptional from Lina, yet Priscilla never heard it without a small thrill of warmth.
An unexceptional earring, for instance, is all the room he needs to work in.
I thought it unexceptional to allow her to participate, Charlotte being such an old friend.
While Damien had dropped out of school, Jason still attended and was a good, if unexceptional, student.
He opened the door and rushed out onto the lawn, a frantic naked man utterly unable to comprehend -- his unmonitored pulse galloping headlong toward the finish line without him -- the rather unexceptional fact of his victimization by the forces of modern life.
Three unexceptional cars filled with gas and the garage attendant scratched his armpits.
His father a competent if unexceptional Administrator of a Midwestern hospitalhad married below himself, had taken to wife one of the Professionals he supervised.
But she takes no notice and just pretends to be an unexceptional little creature called Harriet.
It was a carpet which appeared unexceptional in every way, except perhaps that it had been well used over the course of years.
The walls and doors, fittings and furnishings of the room in the medical facility where he was being confined, all of which were unexceptional, seemed to confound him with awe.
The women spent the difficult hours alone together, trying to find some unexceptional subject of conversation to fill the silence.
He would, with their cooperation, reconstruct their history and their ethos from the un extraordinary siftings of their unexceptional lives, from their letters, from their living memories, from their photo albums, check stubs, Bible entries, school records.
And, sure enough, amid some perfectly unexceptional French Egyptian stamps were some of the valuable carmine-and-purple handstamped Tchongking of 1900.
The Austrian Consulate was across the street from the Hotel Khedival, the festivities there unexceptional.
He stopped beside the first table and admired the glinting stream - no doubt unexceptional to jaded eyes, but to Drew, it was sensational - and then got to work.