boilerplate, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

boilerplate n.

[legal and journalistic jargon boilerplate, standard practice used by lawyers (the regular clauses in any contract) or the media (the basic syndicated wire-service stories used throughout the US newspaper system)]

1. (US) clichéd writing; thus ext. to any banal creation.

1909		‘O. Henry’ ‘Higher Pragmatism’ Works 780: Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling.
1938		W. Winchell On Broadway 28 Aug. [synd. col.] Best coinage of the week is Variety’s ‘boiler-plate’ describing a movie with nothing much in it.
1975		Atlantic Monthly Nov. 10: The President’s talk, from staff-prepared notes, was full of boilerplate and hyperbole [HDAS].
1987		Larry King Live! 5 May [CNN-TV] This is the sort of boilerplate you hear from journalists when they’re accused of wrongdoing [HDAS].

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1990		D. Heilbroner Rough Justice 112: Each stapled packet of forms, boilerplate motions, and complaints represented a phase of a person’s life.
1993		(con. 1969) N.L. Russell Suicide Charlie 74: The day our medals came through for the battle of Mole City, several of us in mortars received Army Commendation Medals for Valor. We had a rollicking good time reading the boilerplate write-ups aloud to each other.
2007		S. Maloney Sucked In 30: Boilerplate stuff — a paste-up of reports from the state branches.