Word of the Day

Wednesday December 16, 2009

pablum [PAB-luhm]

noun

Something (as writing, speech or ideas) that is simplistic or insipid.

The only pieces that one could imagine making it from the runway onto the street were snug black jeans with silver zippers; and they did little to really convey the depth of the designers' talent. Everything else was a dazzling display of technique -- put to no functional end. One wouldn't want them to tamp down their artfulness to lowest-common-denominator pablum.

Robin Givhan, "Alterations Of New Fame; Some Buoyed by Obama, Cinderella Stories Prove That the Show Still Fits", The Washington Post, Sep 16, 2009
How long does it take you to get a handle on the atmosphere of a place? You have to cut through the Pablum and see something meaningful. I like to talk to people, because it's dangerous to make sweeping generalizations. It doesn't matter as much what I think as what the local people say.

Ellen Creager, "Rick Steves wants you to leave your comfort zone", The San Diego Union - Tribune, Jul 12, 2009
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.

James Boyle (1959 - ) A Scottish legal academic. The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (2003)

Origin of the Word

Pablum, approximately 1678, derives from Latin pabulum "fodder, food," a trademark (Mead Johnson & Co.) for a soft, bland cereal used as a food, hence figurative use, by U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew in reference to "mushy" political prose.