All 4 Uses of
platitude
in
The Screwtape Letters
- This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul.†
Chpt 16 *platitudes = things so commonly repeated that they are no longer interesting
- For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our continual concealment of them.†
Chpt 23
- The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had—and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a "great man", but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers.†
Chpt 23platitudinous = commonly repeated or obvious, yet stated as insightful or instructive
- The Enemy loves platitudes.†
Chpt 25platitudes = things so commonly repeated that they are no longer interesting
Definition:
something so commonly repeated that it is no longer interesting