Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who habitually uses platitudes.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of the nature of or characterized by platitude; given to the utterance of platitudes.
- noun One who is addicted to or indulges in platitudes.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One addicted to uttering platitudes, or stale and insipid truisms.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who uses many
platitudes in speaking or writing.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a bore who makes excessive use of platitudes
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Any good platitudinarian will already have forestalled it.
A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Ben Hecht 1929
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The roots of each one of them are in platitude; the roots of every effective stage-play are in platitude; that a dramatist is inevitably a platitudinarian is itself a platitude double damned.
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Its sublimest flower is the American college president, well described by Dr. Veblen - a perambulating sycophant and platitudinarian, a gaudy mendicant and bounder, engaged all his life, not in the battle of ideas, the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, but in the courting of rich donkeys and the entertainment of mobs ....
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We see, too, constantly, how thin is the barrier separating the chief Anglo-Saxon novelists and playwrights from the pasture of the platitudinarian.
A Book of Prefaces 1918
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The archbishop, thinking to have a little fun with his guest, said, ` ` Of course, first of all, I must know what your church politics are: are you an attitudinarian, a latitudinarian, or a platitudinarian? ''
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He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of conversation.
Merely Mary Ann Israel Zangwill 1895
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He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of conversation.
The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Israel Zangwill 1895
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These products of social quackery are now buttressed by habit, fashion, prejudice, platitudinarian thinking, and new quackery in political economy and social science.
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other William Graham Sumner 1875
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-- you have a respect for a political platitudinarian as insensible as an ox to everything he can't turn into political capital.
Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1849
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a platitudinarian peacefulness -- nay, a sort of beauty!
Without Prejudice Israel Zangwill 1895
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