pabulum
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈpæbjələm/
- Archaic
:
pabulum
- The documentary was criticized for its reliance on bland pabulum that offered no new insights.
Examples
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So take your pabulum and snake oil elsewhere.
Blog text (22) -
Publishers, mindful of the creationists, anti-secular humanists, and all the other long-knife interest groups whose lobbying could potentially keep a book out of the schools, have produced books as inoffensive and as infantile as pabulum.
Academic text (1991) -
Ah, the sweet taste of pabulum for the masses!
Academic text (2005) -
Instead, it is pabulum, based more or less (usually less) on history.
Academic text (2004) -
Instead, we get watered-down pabulum.
Blog text (22) -
Such pabulum should have disgusted her, though she smiled and said he'd made her feel better.
Fiction book (2001) -
It issued three paragraphs of pabulum about the campaign against Wiggins...
Blog text (15) -
Brand-name recognition is the pabulum of the electronic age, feeding the culture of perpetual adolescents as if they were perpetual infants.
Academic text (2005) -
Therefore, Simcha—and not his spokesman—owes an answer to those questions—and specific answers, not pabulum—to those questions.
Blog text (20) -
If you are one of those who were force-fed the pabulum of diversity at all costs above all other creeds, I can sympathize with your condition, but at some time in your life, you must stop long enough to question whether such thinking is an absolute truth or simply a means to disarm your survival instincts.
Blog text (17)
Synonyms
7
9.7
Simple words and ideas that lack real meaning
5
8.7
Silly talk about unimportant things
3
9.9
Simple, boring writing or speech that has no real ideas
Boring, unimportant words or ideas in speech that have no real meaning
Cheap, silly writing or shows that give little real information
Compounds
How Bland
Surface Forms
Etymology
Pabulum originally meant 'food', and a helpful way to remember the figurative sense is to think of weak 'food for the mind'; that's why calling a book or show pabulum means it is bland, simple mental 'food' that gives little real challenge.