pablum

noun

1. (US, alt-of, uncountable, usually)Alternative letter-case form of Pablum (“a type of cereal for infants made from cornmeal, oat, and wheat”).
2. (US, broadly, uncountable, usually)Mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food.

   “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.”

   “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— […]”

   “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).”

3. (US, countable, derogatory, figuratively, uncountable, usually)Something overly bland or simplistic, especially speech or writing.

   “"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."”

   “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.”

   “[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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

name

1. (US, uncountable)A type of cereal for infants made from cornmeal, oat, and wheat.

   “Now your baby is even luckier! He'll enjoy new flavor variety with four Pablum cereals— […] They're all equally good for Baby—all based on the original Pablum formula. […] Remember—Pablum is the world's first precooked vitamin and mineral enriched cereal, and doctors have prescribed it for almost twenty years.”