BOILERPLATE
noun | BOY-ler-playt
What it Means
Boilerplate refers to standard or formulaic language, a meaning that comes from an earlier meaning still in use: syndicated material supplied to newspapers in matrix or plate form.
// The last paragraph of the contract was legal boilerplate.
Boilerplate in Context
“New Orleans is where the food, music, history and culture are unlike anywhere else in the world. That’s not travel-guide boilerplate—it’s what hits you the moment you step into the French Quarter and feel the city operating on its own rhythm.” — Lauren Schuster, The Miami Herald, 8 Apr. 2026
Did You Know?
In the days before computers, small newspapers around the U.S. relied heavily on feature stories, editorials, and other printed material supplied by large publishing syndicates. The syndicates delivered that copy on metal plates with the type already in place so the local papers wouldn’t have to set it. Printers apparently dubbed those syndicated plates “boiler plates” because of their resemblance to the plating used in making steam boilers. Soon boilerplate came to refer to the printed material on the plates as well as to the plates themselves. Because boilerplate stories were often more filler—material used to fill extra space in a column or page of a newspaper to increase its size—than important or informative news, the word acquired negative connotations and gained the “standardized or formulaic language” sense widely used today.
Merriam Webster Dictionary
