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pablum

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Pablum

English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin pābulum (“nourishment”), with the modern sense coming via the brand name Pablum.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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pablum (usually uncountable, plural pablums)

  1. (derogatory) Anything overly bland or simplistic, especially speech or writing.
    Synonyms: pabulum, pap
    • 1971, Jules Archer, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, 1968: Year of Crisis, J. Messner, →ISBN, page 94:
      “If you want to be filled with pablum and tranquilizers,” Kennedy told crowds, “then don’t vote for me. I’m not going to give you any tired answers. […] ”
    • 1992 October 23, Ben Wattenberg, “Writer Likes Clinton”, in Daily Sentinel, page 2:
      The Republican argument today is pablum, mush and saccharine. (Which exhausts my edible metaphors.)
    • 1996, David H. Gelernter, 1939, the Lost World of the Fair, New York: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 29:
      Maybe we just don’t buy the pap, pablum and Pollyanification of the Futurama world view any longer because we are simply more sophisticated than the 1939ers.
    • 2008, James Boyle, The Public Domain‎[1]:
      To me, these points seem bland, boring, obvious—verging on tautology or pablum. To many believers in the worldview I have described, they are either straightforward heresy or a smokescreen for some real, underlying agenda—which is identified as communism, anarchism, or, somewhat confusingly, both.
    • 2021 August 23, Josh Blackman, “Noah Feldman Indulges in Brett Kavanaugh Fan Fiction on Dobbs”, in Reason‎[2]:
      And [the Supreme Court] will have to elaborate on Justice Kennedy's nausea-inducing pablum about liberty and jurisprudences of doubt.
    • 2022 July 27, Keith Schneider, “James Lovelock, Whose Gaia Theory Saw the Earth as Alive, Dies at 103”, in The New York Times‎[3], →ISSN:
      A few scientists greeted the hypothesis as a thoughtful way to explain how living systems influenced the planet. Many others, however, called it New Age pablum.
  2. (dated) Nourishment.
    Synonym: pabulum
    (Can we add an example for this sense?)
  3. Alternative letter-case form of Pablum
    • 1957, C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, Wolfbane‎[4]:
      The juice from its hydro-power dam was needed to supply meager light to a million homes and to cook the pablum for two million brand-new babies.

Derived terms

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Translations

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