platitudes

Noun

platitude (countable and uncountable, plural platitudes)

1. (countable) An often-quoted saying that is supposed to be meaningful but has become unoriginal or hackneyed through overuse.
   • Beauty, I suppose, opens the heart, extends the consciousness. It is a platitude, of course.1918, Algernon Blackwood, chapter XI, in The Garden of Survival

   Synonyms:

   cliché, byword, saying, adage, saw, proverb, maxim, apothegm, apophthegm, dictum

2. (countable) A claim that is trivially true, to the point of being uninteresting.
   • The synthesis which he helped to effect was so successful that this aspect of his work escaped notice in the last century: all that Britomart stands for was platitude to our fathers. It is platitude no longer.1963, James R. Kreuzer, Lee Cogan, Modern Writings on Major English Authors, Ardent Media, page 109

   Synonyms:

   truism

3. (uncountable) Flatness; lack of change, activity, or deviation.
   • The former figures the typical prairie landscape-poet who stops at the correction line (which itself literally denies the platitude of flatness) to notice the ever-present wind.1992, Ed Jewinski, Andrew Stubbs, The Politics of Art: Eli Mandel's Poetry and Criticism, page 31
4. (uncountable) Unoriginality; triteness.
   • seemly platitude, flat-footed ordinariness, and well-enacted upper working class respectability cancel out any turpitude, exhilarating tension or satanic glamour a casino might be expected to have.1978, Seven Cities of Australia, page 45