vanilla

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You may swim this summer, but is the past tense "swum" or
"swam?" Check out our Concise Dictionary of English Usage.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?conusg.htm&6
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The Word of the Day for July 25 is:

vanilla   \vuh-NILL-uh\   adjective 
     1 : flavored with vanilla 
    *2 : lacking distinction : plain, ordinary, conventional

Example sentence:
     "The Razorbacks [football team] backed off the blitz and played vanilla 
defense in the second half...." (Scott Cain, _Arkansas Democrat-Gazette_, 
November 16, 2003)

Did you know?
     For lexicographers, "vanilla" has more flavor than "chocolate," because it 
adds a tasty synonym for "plain" to the English menu. The noun "vanilla" was 
first served up in 1662, but it took almost 200 years for its adjective use to 
become established for things, like ice and sugar, flavored with vanilla. By 
the 1970s vanilla was perceived as being the plain flavor of the ice-cream 
world, and people began using the word itself to describe anything plain, 
ordinary, or conventional. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.