Word.ws English Dictionary

pablum

Syllables: pab·lum/ˈpæbləm//ˈpæbl(ə)m/

pablum noun: mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food. Also the alternative letter-case form of Pablum.

pablum: mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food
Image: Windelprinz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pablum (usually uncountable, plural pablums)

  1. (US, broadly, 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.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 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— […]2005, Marc Ponomareff, “[1981]”, in The House of the Dead, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 67
  2. (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."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
    • 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.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
    Synonyms:
    pabulum, pap

Proper noun capitalized: Pablum

Pablum (uncountable)

  1. (US) 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...1951 July 23, “Now Watch Baby’s Progress on All Four! [advertisement]”, in Henry R[obinson] Luce, editor, Life, volume 31, number 4, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2

Also used as

pablum is also the alternative letter-case form of Pablum.

Examples of pablum in a sentence

  • He offered scapegoats, revenge, nationalism, racial superiority, and prowess at arms—pablums for a nervous people.1996, Glen Jeansonne, “Epilogue: ‘Can We All Get Along?’”, in Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II, Chicago...
  • 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.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...
  • To me, these points seem bland, boring, obvious—verging on tautology or pablum.2008, James Boyle, “A Creative Commons”, in The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (A Caravan Book), New Haven, Conn....
  • And it [the Supreme Court] will have to elaborate on Justice [Anthony] Kennedy's nausea-inducing pablum about liberty and jurisprudences of doubt.2021 August 23, Josh Blackman, “The Volokh Conspiracy: Noah Feldman Indulges in Brett Kavanaugh Fan Fiction on Dobbs”, in Reason, Los...

Synonyms of pablum

Forms of pablum

Noun
pluralpablums
Proper noun
alternative formpablum

Origin of 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.

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.

Words formed from pablum

Questions about pablum

What does pablum mean?
Pablum means mushy, easily digested food; pap; (countable) a specific type of such food.
How do you use pablum in a sentence?
He offered scapegoats, revenge, nationalism, racial superiority, and prowess at arms—pablums for a nervous people.
What part of speech is pablum?
Pablum can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce pablum?
Pablum is pronounced /ˈpæbləm/ (UK).
What is the plural of pablum?
The plural of pablum is pablums.

Words near pablum in the dictionary

  1. Pabianice
  2. Pablo
  3. Pabloism
  4. Pabloist
  5. Pabloists
  6. pablum
  7. pablumese
  8. pablumish
  9. pablumize
  10. pablumized
  11. pablumizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pablum (page history and authors); Pablum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-pablum.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-pablum.wav.

Cite this entry: “pablum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pablum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.