mediocrity

That was the task Michael Carrick took on in January when he was appointed Manchester United's interim manager and took over a club that was drifting deeper and deeper into mediocrity.

From BBC ● Oct. 25, 2026

Sample some new snacks: Summer barbecues are rife with potato-chip mediocrity.

From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2026

In 2012, when Mark Walter and his partners bought the Dodgers, team president Stan Kasten declared mediocrity would no longer be acceptable.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026

Was he merely a brilliant mediocrity, the essential staff man who made things tick for the great figures of history without ever being one himself?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.

From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

The partition that once sealed out the cranks and mediocrities has been permanently sundered.

From Slate ● Mar. 6, 2026

But they were also politicians, self-serving and ambitious, often well-born mediocrities flying high above their general level of talent.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2022

The hothouse atmosphere of festivals can be misleading and turn mediocrities into events, certainly, but the noisy clamor of such hype is always outweighed by the joys of experiencing discoveries and revelations with others.

From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2022

"What Is a Dog?" by Chloe Shaw emerges startlingly from a field primarily of mediocrities, then, a remarkably perceptive memoir which is mostly about dogs — or, maybe, much more than that.

From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2021

It’s why picking the right candidate for a job is so difficult and why, on more occasions than we may care to admit, utter mediocrities sometimes end up in positions of enormous responsibility.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell