Crossword clues for platitude
platitude
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Platitude \Plat"i*tude\, n. [F., from plat flat. See Plate.]
-
The quality or state of being flat, thin, or insipid; flat commonness; triteness; staleness of ideas of language.
To hammer one golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitude.
--Motley. A thought or remark which is flat, dull, trite, or weak; a truism; a commonplace.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1812, "dullness," from French platitude "flatness, vapidness" (late 17c.), from Old French plat "flat" (see plateau (n.)); formed on analogy of latitude, etc. Meaning "a flat, dull, or commonplace remark" is recorded from 1815. Related: Platitudinous. Hence platitudinarian (n.), 1855; platitudinize (1867).
Wiktionary
n. 1 An often-quoted saying that is supposed to be meaningful but has become unoriginal or hackneyed through overuse; a cliché. 2 unoriginality; triteness. 3 A claim that is trivially true, to the point of being uninteresting.
WordNet
n. a trite or obvious remark [syn: cliche, banality, commonplace, bromide]
Wikipedia
A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, generally directed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. Platitudes are geared towards presenting a shallow, unifying wisdom over a difficult topic. However, they are too overused and general to be anything more than undirected statements with ultimately little meaningful contribution towards a solution.
Examples could be statements such as "it is what it is", "meet in the middle", "busy as a bee", "method to my madness", "better late than never", "just be yourself", "burning the midnight oil" and "nobody's perfect". Platitudes are generally a form of thought-terminating cliché.
Platitude was a Swedish progressive power metal band formed in 1995, however a permanent line-up was not established until 1997. After three demos, they signed a deal with the Italian label Scarlet Records in the spring of 2002. They released three albums before disbanding in 2008.
In late October 2005, new deals were signed with the German Metal Heaven and Japanese King Records for distribution in Europe and Japan respectively.
In May 2003, Platitude joined the Danish heavy metal band Manticora on a European tour and later the same year supported the British progressive metal band Threshold. They have played gigs all over Europe including openening for Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica in 2004 at a show in Copenhagen.
Since their dissolution in 2008, several band members have been involved in other projects.
Usage examples of "platitude".
They came by rote, a platitude from this speech of long ago, a banality from yesterday, a quotation, an apothegm, a joke.
Dogberries and grandmothers are occasionally found upon the bench, dispensing their honest but destructive platitudes, and their Malaprop constructions of commercial law, to juries of astounded merchants.
Chaucer crowns the satire on the romanticists by making the very landlord of the Tabard cry out in indignant disgust against the stuff which he had heard recited -- the good Host ascribing to sheer ignorance the string of pompous platitudes and prosaic details which Chaucer had uttered.
He had the artificially unctuous voice of a man who had made soothing platitudes habitual.
What in another time and society might be taken as platitudes about public service were to both John and Abigail Adams a lifelong creed.
Since it was practically all platitudes and dull questions to which the answers were obvious, I let Angers do the talking after a while, meantime looking at the pictures on the walls.
He had been so eager to send him to Minbar, so full of platitudes about how important the job was and how only he could do it.
It is the tritest of platitudes to say that he could ill be spared by the English stage.
ISHAK The platitudes of dervishes do not much disturb the beatitudes of kings.
Caesar to himself afterward, was worthier praise than all the platitudes and congratulations Lucullus and Thermus and the legates heaped upon him during the banquet they gave in his honor.
The letters contained mainly simple, sermonlike platitudes, but sometimes they were more radical.
You think people prepared to spend time mouthing platitudes over a few miserable Yids did all this?
So it was rather exasperating when, his absinthe having been served and the customary platitudes passed on the weather and their respective states of health, the conversation was continued in a tongue with which Sofia was not only unacquainted but which sounded like none she had ever heard spoken.
They all had smiles like Zee, and their speech was rife with platitude and beatific evasion.
Sam intoned religious platitudes, Celia tried to blot out the present and recall the richer past.