pablum

See also: Pablum

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpæbləm/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

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.

Translations

something bland or simplistic

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 單調乏味／单调乏味 (dāndiào fáwèi) (adj.)

• Esperanto: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: puppu (fi)
• French: bouillie (fr) f
• German: Einheitsbrei (de) m
• Russian: бана́льщина (ru) f (banálʹščina)
• Serbo-Croatian: trivijalnost (sh) f, banalnost (sh) f
• Spanish: please add this translation if you can
• Swedish: snack (sv)

nourishment — see nourishment