Normal describes what is usual, typical, or expected in a particular situation. When your teacher says “class will meet at the normal time,” she means the regular time you usually meet. When a doctor says your temperature is normal, it means your body temperature falls within the healthy range that most people's does.

What counts as normal depends entirely on context. It's normal for a baby to sleep sixteen hours a day, but not normal for a teenager. It's normal to wear a costume on Halloween but not to school in February. It's normal for your heart to beat faster when you're running, but unusual when you're sitting still.

Sometimes people use “normal” to mean “ordinary” or even “boring,” as in “just a normal day.” But normal isn't the opposite of special or interesting. Albert Einstein had a normal breakfast routine. Olympic athletes have normal conversations with their families. Normal simply means fitting the usual pattern.

When something returns to normal, it goes back to how it typically is. After a snowstorm closes school for a week, everyone's relieved when things return to normal and regular schedules resume.

As a noun, normal can mean the usual state or standard, as in “back to normal” or “the new normal.”

The word can sometimes make people uncomfortable when used to describe people, because it might suggest that anyone different is somehow wrong. That's worth remembering: normal describes patterns and expectations, not whether something or someone is good or valuable.