bromide

plural bromides

1. chemistryA binary compound of bromine and some other element or radical.
   1. chemistryAny salt of hydrobromic acid.
2. chemistryThe anionic form of a bromine atom.

   1 more example

   “How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration,” said Kovrin. “If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog. […]”

   1894, Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett, The Black Monk, published 1917

3. broadlyA dull person with conventional thoughts.

   My adviser at college was a bromide who had not had an original thought in years.

   1 more example

   The bromide conforms to everything sanctioned by the majority, and may be depended upon to be trite, banal, and arbitrary.

   1906, Frank Gelett Burgess, Are You A Bromide?

   Antonyms: sulphite

4. broadlyA platitude.

   We hoped the speech would include reassurances, but instead it was merely one bromide after another.

   4 more examples

   No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.

   1974, Murray Newton Rothbard, “What the State Is Not”, in Anatomy of the State

   Gascoigne was annoyed by this. ‘Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Lauderback, in bringing Mr. Carver to justice,’ he said. ‘Spare the bromide,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘Talk to me plain.’

   2013, Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries, London: Granta Books, published 2014, →ISBN, page 569

   Certainly not Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who is clearly the Rupert Murdoch of his generation. He’s always justifying his cowardly choices with vacuous bromides about “free speech,” but he’s obviously just in it for the money — no matter how much his platform is used to destroy our democracy.

   2020 June 2, Thomas L. Friedman, “America, We Break It, It’s Gone”, in New York Times

   But successive governments have met these mounting challenges with either hard-hearted austerity (from the Conservatives) or bland bromides for change (from Labour).

   2026 June 22, Mark Sappenfield, “Starmer is out, but is Britain done with its prime minister churn?”, in The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts: Christian Science Publishing Society, →ISSN, →OCLC

   Synonyms: platitude, byword, saying, adage, saw, proverb, maxim, apothegm

5. datedA dose of bromide taken as a sedative, or to reduce sexual appetite.
6. artsA print made on bromide paper.