Other parks have more prosaic or serendipitous origins.

BBC: Common people: London's green spaces

That means that a commissioner won't be able to ignore legitimate demands to co-operate with other forces on tackling serious crime - or to assist in more prosaic ways, such as to provide officers to quell riots.

BBC: So you want to be a police and crime commissioner...

When you picked one up didn't matter whether it was a prosaic pigeon feather or a small, sharp, handsome Blue Jay feather no one needed to tell you that you beheld something precious in your hand, something whose impossible lightness and delicacy held valuable lessons, even if you didn't quite know what they were.

WSJ: Of Feathers, Showgirls and Biology

Most are small firms in more prosaic fields, such as restaurants or construction.

ECONOMIST: Japanese shares

Such an attack could be conducted by other means, with more prosaic delivery means such as trucks, ships or aircraft.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The terror next time

The breakthrough came with the discovery that the gene that controls genetic exchange, which goes by the prosaic name of PR-domain containing 9, or Prdm9, is also implicated in generating reproductive incompatibility between different members of the same species.

FORBES: The Human Genome at Ten

For all their lofty talk of connecting people, many Web companies are actually in the prosaic business of selling ads, especially social media companies like Facebook, Digg or Twitter that give away a core service for free.

FORBES: Banner Year? Not Quite

Even in more prosaic issues than those of war and peace the observance of international agreements on trade or the environment, for instance liberal democracies are more likely to play by the rules.

ECONOMIST: A suitable target for foreign policy?