2 June 2019
pabulum (def 1).
[pab-yuh-luh m]
noun
something that nourishes an animal or vegetable organism; food; nutriment.
material for intellectual nourishment.
pablum(def 2).
noun
trite, naive, or simplistic ideas or writings; intellectual pap. Bland or insipid intellectual matter, entertainment, etc.
RELATED WORDS
food, support, nutriment, diet, sustenance, fuel, nutrient
ORIGIN OF PABULUM
1670–80; < Latin pābulum food, nourishment, equivalent to pā(scere ) to feed (akin to food) + -bulum noun suffix of instrument Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR PABULUM (def 1).
The pabulum seemed to be of vegetable origin, though varieties of it had a peculiar flesh-like flavor.
ETIDORHPA OR THE END OF EARTH.|JOHN URI LLOYD
Everybody thinks he can teach English literature, and the public doesnt care particularly: it takes its pabulum largely on trust.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN, VOLUME 2|ELIZABETH BISLAND
To remove the leaves and fallen twigs is to withdraw much of the pabulum upon which the tree was destined to feed.
MAN AND NATURE|GEORGE P. MARSH
Still more would it be of interest to discover what, if any, changes were wrought in the pabulum , or fluid generally.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT, NO. 643, APRIL 28, 1888|VARIOUS EXAMPLE (DEF 2)
But what sort of pabulum was it that the German Press served up for the consumption of its readers in pre-War days? Was it not the worst virulent poison imaginable? Was not pacifism in its worst form inoculated into our people at a time when others were preparing slowly but surely to pounce upon Germany?
CHAPTER 10: CAUSES OF THE COLLAPSE FIRST VOLUME: AN ACCOUNTING MEIN KAMPF (Ford translation) Adolf Hitler
Today’s quote
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
On this day
2 June 1951 – birth of Gilbert Baker, American artist and gay rights activist, who designed the ‘rainbow flag’ in 1978 which came to symbolise the gay rights movement. Died 31 March 2017.
2 June 1953 – Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, England.
2 June 1965 – the first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives in Saigon to assist the American military in the Vietnam War.
2 June 1966 – The ‘Surveyor 1’ space probe lands on the moon. It is the first US space probe to do so. The Soviet Union had successfully landed a space probe, the Lunix 9, on the moon 5 months earlier, on 3 February 1966.