Talk:insipid
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# Utterly lacking in [[intelligent|intelligence]] or [[depth]]; [[fool]]ish. #: ''They insisted upon watching an '''insipid''' show about a singing monkey.''
Sense 1 - utterly lacking in intelligence or depth; foolish. Not a sense I know, and I cannot find it in dictionaries of contemporary English. OED lists it as obsolete. -- WikiPedant 02:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- Huh. That is the only sense I've ever been aware of, though on examining many quotes, the second sense is clearl meant in many of them. The problem I'm finding is that it often isn't possible to tell from context which of these two senses was meant. Here is one that means "foolish", rather than "lacking in character":
- 1926 - H. P. Lovecraft, Cats and Dogs
- This heritage, ironically foisted on us when Roman politics raised the faith of a whipped and broken people to supremacy in the later empire, has naturally kept a strong hold over the weak and sentimentally thoughtless; and perhaps reached its culmination in the insipid nineteenth century, when people were wont to praise dogs "because they are so human" (as if humanity were any valid standard of merit!), and honest Edwin Landseer painted hundreds of smug Fidoes and Carlos and Rovers with all the anthropoid triviality, pettiness, and "cuteness" of eminent Victorians.
- 1926 - H. P. Lovecraft, Cats and Dogs
- --EncycloPetey 06:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, Petey, even that quotation strikes me as probably invoking the sense 2, which is articulated at greater length in the Random House Dictionary: "without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities; vapid." -- WikiPedant 06:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- Not if you read the entire essay. Lovecraft is railing against dogs and people's fondness for them; he was a cat person. --EncycloPetey 06:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, Petey, even that quotation strikes me as probably invoking the sense 2, which is articulated at greater length in the Random House Dictionary: "without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities; vapid." -- WikiPedant 06:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- MW3 provides 3 senses: in summary paraphrase, 1., flavorless, 2., dull, 3., cloyngly sweet. Of these, the third sense seems most consistent with the Lovecraft quote. It also seems a closer fit than the RfVd sense. Least important, the RfVd senses disagrees with my understanding of the word. MW3 also includes insipient, which they say is archaic, as meaning "foolish" or "stupid". DCDuring 11:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- I would agree, but that sense wasn't in the entry at all! Obviously, the entry needs more than just verification, we may need a complete rewrite of the definitions from the ground up. --EncycloPetey 14:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
- Not quite from the ground up, but rewritten with 3 senses + kept RfVd sense; made other small changes.
cloingly sweet?[edit]
- Cloyingly sweet or sentimental.
- Greeting cards contain some of the the most insipid words ever written.
I've never seen this sense, and this usage sample very easily falls into the previously listed sense (Flat; lacking character or definition.) 76.10.162.226 13:08, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
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Sense “cloyingly sweet or sentimental”. --Lambiam 20:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
- cited Kiwima (talk) 21:48, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
- I do not see how the cites support this specific sense. It is easy to find cites in which something is said to have a “dull brown colour”, yet this will not support the sense “lustreless brown” for dull. --Lambiam 10:35, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- Do they strike you as supporting any of the other senses? They certainly do not mean flavourless. Neither do they seem to mean bland and colourless. I might go for trite, (other than the taste of liquorice quote, which I cannot honestly see as meaning anything other than cloyingly sweet.) Kiwima (talk) 11:30, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- Of the four cites, perhaps the first is not good support, IMO. The two uses in a series of near synonyms (synonymia in rhetoric) seem good. And it is hard to argue that treacle could be insipid in any of the other senses. DCDuring (talk) 12:05, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- I thought the authors could mean flat, lacking character or definition, boring, vacuous, dull, bland, characterless. The synonyms fatuous and trite offered for this sense also have no sense of being cloying. --Lambiam 15:48, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- I would just delete those purported synonyms of the sense under challenge. I was only interested in the use of insipid in parallel to "cloying" and "syrup-sweet". It is very hard for me to accept any of the other terms as semantically appropriate in conjunction with "cloying" and "syrup-sweet". I am surprised that insipid has taken on this meaning in any usage, but the evidence seems sufficient to me. DCDuring (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- I'm surprised, too. I read those usages as meaning "without flavour sufficient to gratify the palate" or possibly "wanting the qualities which excite interest or emotion; uninteresting, lifeless, dull, flat." (OED definitions.) I think these are good descriptions of some of the liquorice I've eaten. Dbfirs 09:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- I would just delete those purported synonyms of the sense under challenge. I was only interested in the use of insipid in parallel to "cloying" and "syrup-sweet". It is very hard for me to accept any of the other terms as semantically appropriate in conjunction with "cloying" and "syrup-sweet". I am surprised that insipid has taken on this meaning in any usage, but the evidence seems sufficient to me. DCDuring (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- I thought the authors could mean flat, lacking character or definition, boring, vacuous, dull, bland, characterless. The synonyms fatuous and trite offered for this sense also have no sense of being cloying. --Lambiam 15:48, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- Of the four cites, perhaps the first is not good support, IMO. The two uses in a series of near synonyms (synonymia in rhetoric) seem good. And it is hard to argue that treacle could be insipid in any of the other senses. DCDuring (talk) 12:05, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- Do they strike you as supporting any of the other senses? They certainly do not mean flavourless. Neither do they seem to mean bland and colourless. I might go for trite, (other than the taste of liquorice quote, which I cannot honestly see as meaning anything other than cloyingly sweet.) Kiwima (talk) 11:30, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
- I do not see how the cites support this specific sense. It is easy to find cites in which something is said to have a “dull brown colour”, yet this will not support the sense “lustreless brown” for dull. --Lambiam 10:35, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 20:55, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
- With apologies for coming in rather late, I'm going to re-open this to add to the discussion: if we had been presented with these citations without someone having added "cloyingly sweet" as a sense to the entry, what would lead us to deduce that this is what the citations meant? Is there something e.g. in the word's etymology or in other dictionaries that to suggest it has such a meaning? Or is this a case where, a sense having been made up, ambiguous citations can be found which could support it — but, as Dbfirs says, could also just be using the usual sense? (I see the sense was added all the way back in 2007, by one of our best editors, so I'm optimistic, but still questioning.) The idea that something could not be "insipid"-as-in-flavorless if it is "cloying, syrup-sweet" (as in the 2007 cite), or "insipid, cloying, the taste of liquorice" or "insipid treacle", and that therefore "insipid" in these citations must mean something other than flavorless, is rebuttable: I can find a book referring to "flavorless sweet frosting", one referring to a "flavorless sweet taste", several referring to google books:"flavorless syrup" and even "sweet, flavorless syrup" (and "creamy, flavorless syrup"). - -sche (discuss) 15:03, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- I was a newbie in 2007, could have been wrong then, and could be wrong now. Maybe the cites aren't unambiguous. I don't know what cites or arguments can resolve this. Can we find cites that indicate that flavor is sometimes used in a way that requires more than one of the simple things our five/four kinds of taste buds (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami) can detect? DCDuring (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- I can find cites for "flavorless/flavourless sugar/salt". DCDuring (talk) 17:09, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- I was a newbie in 2007, could have been wrong then, and could be wrong now. Maybe the cites aren't unambiguous. I don't know what cites or arguments can resolve this. Can we find cites that indicate that flavor is sometimes used in a way that requires more than one of the simple things our five/four kinds of taste buds (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami) can detect? DCDuring (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- With apologies for coming in rather late, I'm going to re-open this to add to the discussion: if we had been presented with these citations without someone having added "cloyingly sweet" as a sense to the entry, what would lead us to deduce that this is what the citations meant? Is there something e.g. in the word's etymology or in other dictionaries that to suggest it has such a meaning? Or is this a case where, a sense having been made up, ambiguous citations can be found which could support it — but, as Dbfirs says, could also just be using the usual sense? (I see the sense was added all the way back in 2007, by one of our best editors, so I'm optimistic, but still questioning.) The idea that something could not be "insipid"-as-in-flavorless if it is "cloying, syrup-sweet" (as in the 2007 cite), or "insipid, cloying, the taste of liquorice" or "insipid treacle", and that therefore "insipid" in these citations must mean something other than flavorless, is rebuttable: I can find a book referring to "flavorless sweet frosting", one referring to a "flavorless sweet taste", several referring to google books:"flavorless syrup" and even "sweet, flavorless syrup" (and "creamy, flavorless syrup"). - -sche (discuss) 15:03, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
I think that (all our citations of "flavourless" syrups, sugars and salts) establishes that the citations previously offered do not in fact rule out the usual meaning (either "flavorless" or "lacking character"), and I don't see anything in them to suggest the novel meaning, and I find similar citations where "insipid" is likewise used near e.g. "cloying" but where further context shows that the usual meaning is meant. Consider:
- 1994, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: Poems (→ISBN), page 21:
- The charges of banality, irritating obviousness and insipid, cloying rhetoric made against the translations by him (as well as by others with his approval) are too well known to reiterate.
- 2006, Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture (→ISBN):
- Our music is often insipid, cloying, and romantic. We sing pop-style love songs to Jesus, confessing our undying love for him in the same way that pop idols sing to a boyfriend or girlfriend. Where is the danger? Where is the responsibility?
I think the translations, also being called banal, are being alleged to be colourless, not "sweet"; similarly, I think the Christian music is being alleged to lack character (danger! responsibility!), not to be "cloying" (some could argue "cloying" could also work given the comparison to love songs, but I think it's the word "cloying" in the sentence which conveys that, not the word "insipid", which seems to connote "vacuous, lacking character" like it usually does). IOW I think the RFVed sense doesn't exist and the citations offered in support of it are only using the regular sense. - -sche (discuss) 19:58, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 17:38, 14 October 2019 (UTC)