PLATITUDE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does platitude mean? 

• PLATITUDE (noun)
  The noun PLATITUDE has 1 sense:

1. a trite or obvious remark

  Familiarity information: PLATITUDE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PLATITUDE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A trite or obvious remark

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

banality; bromide; cliche; commonplace; platitude

Hypernyms ("platitude" is a kind of...):

comment; input; remark (a statement that expresses a personal opinion or belief or adds information)

truism (an obvious truth)

Derivation:

platitudinous (dull and tiresome but with pretensions of significance or originality)

 Context examples 

"Charley Hapgood, that fellow who speaks always in platitudes?" Martin groaned.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Nobody manufactured their opinions for them; they were all rebels of one variety or another, and their lips were strangers to platitudes.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The cashier was Martin's black beast, and his temper was a trifle short where the talker of platitudes was concerned.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I really don't object to platitudes, he told Ruth later; but what worries me into nervousness is the pompous, smugly complacent, superior certitude with which they are uttered and the time taken to do it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was so cleverly stupid and unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the platitudes of the average voter that—oh, well, you know you flatter any man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

But in Martin's estimation the whole tribe of bank cashiers fell a few hundred per cent, and for the rest of the evening he labored under the impression that bank cashiers and talkers of platitudes were synonymous phrases.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)