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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bog-standard adj.

also bog-ordinary

[despite assumed link to bog n.¹ the OED suggests ultimate ety. in box-standard, ‘motoring, engineering, and other technical contexts: in standard manufactured form, unmodified; (hence) basic, unexceptional’]

average.

1980		Sounds Int’l Apr. 57/3: JH do many different sizes and types but the bog-standard model costs £250.
1988		Studio Sound & Broadcast Egineering 30 88/3: Rupert Murdoch is now broadcasting four Sky channels of entertainment in bog standard PAL TV format, without soft scrambling or hard encryption.
1998		G. Burn Happy Like Murderers 90: This bog-ordinary, prefabricated, pebble-finished stand.
1999		Guardian G2 9 July 7: It’s fairly bog standard.
2000		Indep. on Sun. Real Life 9 Jan. 1: A life of drudgery as bog standard police officers.
2004		T. Winton ‘Cockleshell’ in Turning (2005) 114: She was bog-ordinary.
2012		Independent (London) 19 Oct. 44/3: Any bog-standard block cheese is automatically labelled cheddar.
2012		D. Whish-Wilson ‘In Savage Freedom’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Starting with Sulphate back in the eighties, bog-standard Crank.
2017		T. Spicer Good Girl Stripped Bare 7: Not arses-out-of-our-pants, holes-in-all-of-my-shoes, please-sir-can-I-have-some-more poor. Bog standard, Australian working-class poor.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 185: ‘A bogstandard city awaits, I’m afraid’.