Hackneyed vs. Platitude

By Jaxson

  • Platitude

    A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, generally directed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. Platitudes are geared towards presenting a shallow, unifying wisdom over a difficult topic. However, they are too general and overused to be anything more than undirected statements with ultimately little meaningful contribution towards a solution.

    Examples could be statements such as “it is what it is”, “meet in the middle”, “busy as a bee”, “method to my madness”, “better late than never”, “just be yourself”, “burning the midnight oil”, “strength is something you choose”, “thoughts and prayers”, and “nobody’s perfect”. Platitudes are generally a form of thought-terminating cliché.

Wikipedia
  • Hackneyed (adjective)

    Repeated too often.

    “banal|commonplace|clichéd|shopworn|stock|threadbare|timeworn|tired|trite|unoriginal|well-worn|Thesaurus:hackneyed”

    “The sermon was full of hackneyed phrases and platitudes.”

  • Hackneyed (adjective)

    Let out for hire.

  • Hackneyed (verb)

    simple past tense and past participle of hackney

  • Platitude (noun)

    An often-quoted saying that is supposed to be meaningful but has become unoriginal or hackneyed through overuse; a cliché.

  • Platitude (noun)

    Unoriginality; triteness.

  • Platitude (noun)

    A claim that is trivially true, to the point of being uninteresting.

Wiktionary
  • Platitude (noun)

    a remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful

    “she began uttering liberal platitudes”

Oxford Dictionary
–>

Leave a Comment