In Paris one of the leading newspapers is Le Monde, which of course is French for “The World.”

This is a clue for us as to what the word “mundane” is all about.

Literally mundane means “of the world” and when I hear people talk about things that are mundane they usually mean things that are average, undistinguished, pretty regular every day things.

But the meaning of “mundane” has in the past related to things that were not humdrum at all.  I’ll start with the less exciting.

• To officials of the Church, people who were mundane were “of the world” and so, non-officials of the church.
• Charles Darwin said that owls were mundane, and by that he meant they were ubiquitous, “of the world” they exist pretty much everywhere.
• Those with a broad perspective of how our planet fits into the universe used “mundane” as a synonym for “cosmic.”
• And finally, mundane has been used with the same winking acknowledgement as the phrase “man of the world” with a meaning that a mundane person was one who enjoyed their earthly pleasures.

When I looked up “mundane” on urbandictionary I entered a whole other monde.

Evidently in role playing games, where your on-line persona might be something like “dragon-hammer” or “sky-goddess”, your real-life identity is called your mundane.

A more popular urbandictionary definition had a cryptic reference saying that people who were mundanes were those who weren’t furries.

Huh? What’s a furry?

Urbandictionary at least can explain itself on this one.  Evidently a furry is someone who is an enthusiast of science fiction and fantasy where the heroes are animals.  Some going so far as to dress up in furry suits and attend conventions kind of like treckies who dress up as Klingons.

Once I got this far I realized that the OED was actually pretty up to date on this since one of their definitions of mundane were the vast majority of people who are not hard core science fiction fans.  The OED entry is updated to 2003 but evidently this meaning of mundane has been used since 1955 or 59.

Since I didn’t know, I am clearly mundane.