DEFINED-BOILERPLATE

In dem der olden deys, steam boilers were built from very heavy tough steel sheets. Similar sheets of steel were also used for engraving copy that was intended for widespread reproduction in multiple issues of newspapers—things like ads and syndicated columns. Regular, here today, gone tomorrow copy was set in much softer, durable lead.

So the stuff that stuck around became known as the boilerplate. According to Wiki: “Until the 1950s, thousands of newspapers received and used this kind of boilerplate from the nation’s largest supplier, the Western Newspaper Union.” Today, of course, boilerplate is used to describe anything that’s standard language, say in a contract or even in computer code.