bromide n.
1. a person whose thoughts and conversation are conventional and commonplace; a dull, boring person.
![]() | Topeka State Jrnl 2 Mar. 8/5: The Bromide and the Sulphite People. The typical bromide — and all bromides are typical — is fond of discussing ‘symptoms’ [...] Most women are bromides [...] Boys are excessively bromidic also. | |
![]() | Are You A Bromide? 17: The Bromide does his thinking by syndicate. He follows the main-travelled road, he goes with the crowd. In a word, they all think and talk alike. | |
![]() | Confessions of a Con Man 126: An average-minded man – what they’re calling a ‘bromide’ these days. | |
![]() | Dict. Amer. Sl. | |
![]() | More Pricks than Kicks 64: He was run plump into by one Chas, a highbrow bromide of French nationality. | |
![]() | Hair of the Dogma (1989) 80: I have been looking at a little book [...] it is by an American, Gelett Burgess, and deals with ‘bromides’. | ‘Fossilanguage’ in
2. (also bromidiom) a commonplace saying, a trite remark; a soothing statement; thus bromidic, bromidically, commonplace, conventionally.
![]() | Are You A Bromide? 17: It is not merely because this remark is trite that it is bromidic. | |
![]() | Hand-made Fables 121: He pulled a weak Bromide about Liberty Hall but, just as it escaped him, he realized that it sounded Hollow and Unconvincing. | |
![]() | Haunch Paunch and Jowl 263: ‘Good citizenship should not condone wrongdoing.’ I have repeated his memorable bromidiom. | |
![]() | Prison Days and Nights 183: It may be very bromidically said that the criminal is, after all, a human being. | |
![]() | Disinherited 188: I almost let the bromide about ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’ slip out. | |
![]() | in By Himself (1974) 414: The Christian Science Monitor: Day in and day out the same old bromides. | |
![]() | Gidget Goes Hawaiian 43: She already gave me that bromide – and it didn’t fizzle. |