pablum

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.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpæbləm/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpæbl(ə)m/

• Audio (General American):

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• Hyphenation: pab‧lum

pablum (usually uncountable, plural pablums) (chiefly US)

1. (uncountable) Alternative letter-case form of Pablum (“a type of cereal for infants made from cornmeal, oat, and wheat”).
3. (by extension, uncountable) Mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food.
   • 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:

     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.

   • 2005, Marc Ponomareff, “[1981]”, in The House of the Dead, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 67:

     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— […]

   • 2008, “Tamarind”, in Lost Crops of Africa, volume III (Fruits), Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, →ISBN, page 153:

     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).

4. (countable, uncountable, figurative, derogatory) Something overly bland or simplistic, especially speech or writing.

   Synonyms: pabulum, pap

   • 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:

     "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."

   • 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:

     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.

   • 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:

     [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.

   • 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:

     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, “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:

     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, “The Volokh Conspiracy: Noah Feldman Indulges in Brett Kavanaugh Fan Fiction on Dobbs”, in Reason‎^[1], Los Angeles, Calif.: Reason Foundation, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 June 2025:

     And it [the Supreme Court] will have to elaborate on Justice [Anthony] 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^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 7 July 2025:

     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.

• Pablum on Wikipedia.Wikipedia