1. A substance that gives nourishment; food.
2. Insipid intellectual nourishment: "TV . . . gobbled up comedy material and spat it out as pabulum" (Richard Corliss).

[Latin pābulum. Sense 2, by confusion with PABLUM.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.