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Les Misérables vocabulary
789 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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platitude
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synonyms: commonplace, bromide, truism, banality, shibboleth ???
► definition
Definition:uninteresting, overdone cliché; trite speech---1. The quality or state of being flat, thin, or insipid; flat commonness; triteness; staleness of ideas of language.2. A thought or remark which is flat, dull, trite, or weak; a truism; a commonplace.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)---n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.Ambose Bierce. The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
► uses
Uses:
I don’t listen. I’ve heard this speech, or one like it, often enough before: the same platitudes, the same slogans, the same phrases
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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And out of the dividends magnificent churches are builded in New England, wherein your kind preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied recipients of those dividends."
Jack London. The Iron Heel
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I remember her telling me how sorry she was that my marriage was over, I remember losing my temper at her platitudes.
Paula Hawkins. The Girl on the Train, p.116 (2015)
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his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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the platitudinous colonel gallantly offered to carry them into the car.
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita
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