Friday, 11 December 2015

is there a word for super general advice?

As I noted in a comment above, I think "fatuous truisms" fits the bill quite well, except that it's a two-word phrase. According to Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1942):




Fatuous does not necessarily or even often imply a pathological lack of intelligence, but it always implies the appearance of it and suggests a combination of foolishness, stupidity, and inanity.




A truism, according to Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003), has a similar sense of pointlessness:




truism (1708) an undoubted or self-evident truth; esp. : one too obvious for mention.




One-word options include banalities and bromides.



Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms does a nice job of distinguishing among various nouns of the commonplace family:




A commonplace is a stock idea or expression which is frequently little more than the obvious, conventional, and easy thing to think or say on a given subject. ... Platitude adds to commonplace the idea of flatness or triteness and often, utterance with an air of importance or novelty. ... A truism is a self-evident truth; it differs from an axiom ... in frequently implying a somewhat superfluous insistence upon the obvious; as, Pope's palpable truism "The proper study of mankind is man." Bromide (a slang term) applies to any commonplace, platitude, or truism that strikes the listener or reader as especially dull or hackneyed and often, as evidence of its maker's low-grade mentality...




The remark about bromide being "a slang term " shows the age of this reference work; but otherwise, the distinctions it makes remain current, I believe.

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