Meaning of bread and circuses | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Food and entertainment provided by the state, particularly if intended to placate the people.
   idiomatic, plural, plural-only
2. Grand spectacles staged or statements made to distract and pacify people.
   broadly, plural, plural-only

Equivalents

Examples

“The government of William Ewart Gladstone may not supply the people, as the Roman emperors did, with "bread and circuses," but if giving them plenty to talk about can satisfy a nation, we Britishers ought just now to be very happy. A whole week is never permitted to elapse without some piece of political gaucherie being enacted for the public amusement.”

“Take a Mahommedan at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction; [...] but see him in his hours of relaxation, or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fireworks as the height of human felicity. Now swings and fireworks are Arabic for bread and circuses, and our pleb's passion for them is insatiable.”

“In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.”

“One thing which this study makes evident is that the Welfare State fantasy is usually conjured up by some scheming politician posing as a public benefactor and using "bread and circuses", paid for by the people's own money, to buy the support of the populace.”

“But is populism actually popular? Or is it simply sedative patronisation, bread and circuses devised by a cynical caste of free marketeers who presumptuously underestimate the collective intellect?”

“At one rather telling point, [Jeremy] Hunt accused Boris [Johnson] of 'peddling optimism' by trying to guarantee we would definitely leave the EU on October 31. Boris's bread-and-circuses response – 'People want a bit of optimism, Jeremy!' – drew wild applause from the 200-odd crowd.”

CEFR level