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 overused and general to be anything more than undirected statements with ultimately little meaningful contribution towards a solution.

Examples could be statements such as "meet in the middle", "busy as a bee", "method to my madness", "better late than never", "just be yourself", "burning the midnight oil" and "nobody's perfect". Platitudes are generally a form of thought-terminating cliché.

Etymology

The word is a borrowing from the French compound platitude, from plat 'flat' + -(i)tude '-ness', thus 'flatness'. The figurative sense is first attested in French in 1694 in the meaning 'the quality of banality' and in 1740 in the meaning 'a commonplace remark'. It is first attested in English in 1762.

See also

Platitude (band)

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Platitude was a Swedish progressive power metal band formed in 1995, however a permanent line-up was not established until 1997. After three demos, they signed a deal with the Italian label Scarlet Records in the spring of 2002. They released three albums before disbanding in 2008.

In late October 2005, new deals were signed with the German Metal Heaven and Japanese King Records for distribution in Europe and Japan respectively.

In May 2003, Platitude joined the Danish heavy metal band Manticora on a European tour and later the same year supported the British progressive metal band Threshold. They have played gigs all over Europe including openening for Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica in 2004 at a show in Copenhagen.

Since their dissolution in 2008, several band members have been involved in other projects.

Members

Last line-up