'Little or No True Value'

Just as songs and commercial jingles randomly enter my consciousness, without me having heard them, some dating back sixty years or more, so too do words. Friday’s irritant was flummery. I thought I might have remembered it from Shakespeare but I was wrong. I vaguely recalled that it meant nonsense, bloviation, bullshit. That led me to check H.L. Mencken. It would seem to have been coined for him. I found it. In Prejudices: Fourth Series (1924), describing Rotary (a frequent Mencken target) and other civic and fraternal organizations, and the titles, rituals, and costumes members wear, he refers to “self-deceptive flummery.” He uses it several other times.

Next I checked the OED. It has an unlikely origin and entered English early in the seventeenth century from the Welsh. It meant: “A dish made by soaking ground oats or other grains in water and then boiling them to form a gelatinous semi-solid porridge.” You can hear the modern metaphorical meaning bubbling. In the following century, it came to mean something a little more appetizing:

“Any of various sweet dishes having a soft, gelatinous consistency; . . . a dish resembling a custard or blancmange, made with milk or cream, eggs, and sugar, and sometimes shaped in a mould.”

Almost simultaneously, the word moved closer to the modern meaning: “Speech or behaviour considered as having little or no true value; nonsense; . . . insincere praise; empty flattery; (now frequently) meaningless and often ostentatious or extravagant behaviour or display.” Authors cited include Walter Scott, Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy.

I dare you to find a more useful, reasonably polite word to describe today’s cant-filled politics, most writing, advertising, and even casual conversation.