Spot the Frippet: pabulum.

The word pabulum means three related things.

First of all, pabulum means food. This makes it a very easy Spot indeed, because it might be almost rarer for a person to be in a place where he or she can't see anything to eat than that he or she can. 

Pabulum was first used to describe the nutrients a tree or animal absorbs in order to function, but then in the 1600s pabulum came to mean subjects worthy of reflection, something so intellectually stimulating that it could be regarded as food for the mind. 

And then something odd happened, and the third and most recent meaning of pabulum is something that's designed to avoid controversy by being dull, safe, and stodgy. It might be a piece of writing, perhaps, or some very undemanding television.

Now, you might be remembering England's food reputation as the land of the bland and be seeing a connection.

But, actually...

Spot the Frippet: pabulum. This word comes from the Latin pascere, to feed.

The change between pabulum meaning something essential and nourishing to something mind-destroyingly uninteresting did actually occur because of some very bland food, but as it happened it wasn't English but Canadian. 

In the 1930s a team of Canadian doctors invented a kind of baby food they called Pablum, based on the word pabulum. It was so tasteless that the poor word pabulum was affected and its meaning took a 180 degree turn.