waterish

Not vapid, waterish amusements, but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard names; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience and good deeds; and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.

Those of us who lived through laws of discrimination, prejudice and AIDS are finely tuned to political statements that sound great but in real terms are "waterish, bleak, and thin" (George Herbert, The Windows).

He added: "The lower part thereof standeth very waterish, the upper riseth with faire buildings, for the credite and praise whereof I may not reckon this in the last place, a town that full of inhabitants".