Talk:platitudeness

RFV discussion: September–November 2020

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platitudeness

I just added two citations, one of which ("Beware of platitudeness and ponderosity") does appear to use this as a noun, which is what the entry is currently presented as: but the other two citations in the entry look like misspellings of the adjective "platitudinous", and thus not usable as citations of this noun. - -sche (discuss) 06:14, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, a number of Google Book hits for "platitudeness" seem to be errors for "platitudinous". A valid one may be "Notwithstanding the platitudeness of the comment that teacher education is a complex issue ..." [1]. I'm a bit concerned that the speaker of the "Beware of platitudeness and ponderosity" quote also uses made-up or mistaken complicated-sounding words "promoltigating" (presumably meant as a mistake for or made-up variation of "promulgating"?) and "exorditation". I'm not sure how valid it is to use this quote to support another queried "complicated-sounding" word. Mihia (talk) 10:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

It did also occur to me that the "teacher education" quote apparently uses "platitudeness" to mean "quality of being platitudinous". Is this the same as an uncountable sense of "platitude", per our present definition, or are there potentially two distinct meanings here? Mihia (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

The spelling platitudiness is also found. A majority of occurrences are misspellings of platitudinous, but in several uses it is a noun: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].  --Lambiam 18:18, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The properly formed term for the “quality of being platitudinous” is, of course, platitudinosity, which, although suffering from sesquipedality, has a sufficient number of uses to be includable.  --Lambiam 18:26, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Or platitudinousness. To Mihia's question, it's possible all the citations which are nouns could be read as "quality of being platitudinous", and the present meaning of platitude" could just be a mistake. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Or, indeed, the citations (at least the ones which are nouns ... or rather, the only one which is a noun, the 2006 one, which seems to be intentionally using nonstandard words, perhaps sloppily as far as meaning is concerned) could just mean "platittude + -ness" (the quality of being a platitude), which would be hard to distinguish from platitudinousness (the quality of being characterized by platitude), anyway. - -sche (discuss) 17:18, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

The citations are uncountable. Platitude is not. Equinox ◑ 19:38, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

"Platitude" can be uncountable, even though it is often countable. Mihia (talk) 09:45, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Platitude is legion and its multitude may seem uncountable. The term itself can be seen to be uncountable in the following uses: [7], [8], [9].  --Lambiam 15:54, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Has the uncountable sense become obsolete, that is, seeming wrong to almost all current English speakers? DCDuring (talk) 02:37, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Not to me. Mihia (talk) 19:45, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I have altered the definition to make it clearly a synonym of platitudinousness rather than platitude (where it is only a synonym of the most uncommon sense) and have cited this meaning. I moved the quotes that were misspellings of platitudinous to the citations page. Kiwima (talk) 19:40, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 21:34, 8 November 2020 (UTC)