flummery.

1. Empty, nonsensical talk or elaborate display that seems to lack genuine meaning or substance.

2. A soft pudding or jelly, traditionally made from cereal meal, with other sweet versions bearing the same name.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• ceremonial flummery
• dismiss as flummery
• political flummery

On the page

He dismissed the ceremony as flummery and returned to work.

The speech's flummery concealed how little had actually been decided.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated prose. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable for empty display or a dessert quantity. Countable singular flummery; plural flummeries for distinct desserts, recipes or instances. Commonness: uncommon (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct dictionary reading: soft flour/meal jelly or porridge and other sweet desserts; mummery/mumbo jumbo. Modern ceremonial empty-display uses read. Dessert recipe variants kept together; empty talk/display retained separately. Hollow flattery is not asserted as an independently verified sense. Individual usefulness checked for a precise literary, narrative, dialogue or critical function. Definitions and examples are original; commonness is an editorial estimate. Mood and intensity apply only to inherent qualities of the specific sense. Writing functions: empty impressive display, a named traditional dessert with variable recipes.