pablum
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpæbləm/
ipa: /ˈpæbl(ə)m/
Forms: form: pablums
Etymology: A variant of Pablum, the name of a food supplement for malnourished infants developed in 1931 by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Mead Johnson & Company, probably a shortening of Latin pābulum (“fodder for animals; food, nourishment”), from pā(scō) (“to feed, nourish; to drive to pasture; to support; to tend”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect, ward; to shepherd”)) + -bulum (suffix denoting an instrument) (from Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom (a variant of *-trom (suffix denoting an instrument or tool))), or directly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-dʰlom (from *peh₂- + *-dʰlom). The name was trademarked in the United States in 1932.
Senses: glosses: Alternative letter-case form of Pablum (“a type of cereal for infants made from cornmeal, oat, and wheat”).
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1957 October, Frederik Pohl, C[yril] M. Kornbluth, “Wolfbane […]. Chapter III.”, in The Galaxy. […], volume 14, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Sheldon & Co., →OCLC, page 23, column 1:
text: The smallest of attentions on his wife's part towards the baby […] struck him as having the nature of an affront. Clothes would have to be bought, a carriage, toys, all manner of pablums and bromides—then even larger clothes, a larger carriage, a longer bed— […]
ref: 2005, Marc Ponomareff, “[1981]”, in The House of the Dead, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 67:
text: They [tamarinds] can be used to sweeten and season foods such as: […] Cereal products—including Africa's many types of porridges, gruels, and pablums (fufu, ugali, toh, ogi, kisra, pap, couscous, and the rest).
ref: 2008, “Tamarind”, in Lost Crops of Africa, volume III (Fruits), Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, →ISBN, page 153:
glosses: Mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food.
examples: text: "If you want to be filled with pablum and tranquilizers," [Robert F.] Kennedy told crowds, "then don’t vote for me. I'm not going to give you any tired answers. […] I'm going to tell it like it is."
ref: 1971, Jules Archer, quoting Robert Francis Kennedy, “The Second Kennedy Assassination”, in 1968: Year of Crisis, New York, N.Y.: Julian Messner, →ISBN, page 94:
text: The Republican argument today is pablum, mush and saccharine. (Which exhausts my edible metaphors.) Do Republicans really think that America's big problems are "taxes" and "trust"? Give me a cake.
ref: 1992 October 23, Ben Wattenberg, “Writer likes [Bill] Clinton”, in The Daily Sentinel, volume 43, number 128, Pomeroy; Middleport, Ohio: Multimedia, Inc., →OCLC, page 2:
text: [Adolf] Hitler's career coincided with the growth of these tensions. He offered scapegoats, revenge, nationalism, racial superiority, and prowess at arms—pablums for a nervous people.
ref: 1996, Glen Jeansonne, “Epilogue: ‘Can We All Get Along?’”, in Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II, Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 188:
text: 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.
ref: 1996 May, David Hillel Gelernter, “Prologue: The Center of Time”, in 1939, the Lost World of the Fair, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 29:
text: 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.
ref: 2008, James Boyle, “A Creative Commons”, in The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (A Caravan Book), New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 200:
text: And it [the Supreme Court] will have to elaborate on Justice [Anthony] Kennedy's nausea-inducing pablum about liberty and jurisprudences of doubt.
ref: 2021 August 23, Josh Blackman, “The Volokh Conspiracy: Noah Feldman Indulges in Brett Kavanaugh Fan Fiction on Dobbs”, in Reason, Los Angeles, Calif.: Reason Foundation, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 Jun 2025:
text: A few scientists greeted the hypothesis [the Gaia theory] as a thoughtful way to explain how living systems influenced the planet. Many others, however, called it New Age pablum.
ref: 2022 July 27, Keith Schneider, “James Lovelock, whose Gaia theory saw the Earth as alive, dies at 103”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 07 Jul 2025:
synonyms: pabulum
pap
glosses: Something overly bland or simplistic, especially speech or writing.
Derived terms: pablumese
pablumish
pablumize