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Definition
pompous or pretentious talk or writing(often using difficult words in an attempt to make something sound more important than it is or to make the speaker sound more intelligent)
- The media relishes her bombastic style.
bombastic = pompous or pretentious talk or writing
(often using difficult words to make something sound more important than it is or to make the speaker sound more intelligent)
(often using difficult words to make something sound more important than it is or to make the speaker sound more intelligent)
- His speeches are outbursts of incredible arrogance, equally powerful and bombastic.Fletcher, Robert Huntington -- A History of English Literature
- We all expect and even enjoy a certain amount of bombast from our politicians, but it is not a good thing that public policy and private practice should diverge as much as they do in the United States today.Christopher DeMuth -- After the Ascent -- http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.11289,filter.all/pub_detail.asp (retrieved 06/29/06)
- they do not know how to speak to men, with false maxims, with bombastic commonplaces!Voltaire -- Candide
- ...nobody ever knew ... if he did not perhaps learn it too from the same book out of which he taught himself the words, the bombastic phrases...William Faulkner -- Absalom, Absalom!
- How now, my sweet creature of bombast?William Shakespeare -- Henry IV, Part 1
- But Uncle Willie was suffering under our father's bombastic pressure,Maya Angelou -- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- We have receiv'd your letters, full of love;
Your favours, the ambassadors of love;
And, in our maiden council, rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombast and as lining to the time;William Shakespeare -- Love's Labour's Lost - The boys know it, too, they've learned this well, and they'll all wave goodbye with it, stridently, strong-armed, father-son, with the bombast of Americans, not yet knowing that this is the last language they will share.Chang-rae Lee -- Native Speaker
- -with two extremely bombastic Christian names: Alexander and Bonaparte.Agatha Christie -- The ABC Murders
- He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly.Stephen Crane -- The Red Badge of Courage
- And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels -- The Communist Manifesto
- Athelny, with his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature.W. Somerset Maugham -- Of Human Bondage
- Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said.Joseph Conrad -- Lord Jim
- Such remarks are rescued from bombast by knowledge that all four men who wrote them—two lieutenants, a sergeant, and a private—were killed in action.James M. McPherson -- What They Fought For - 1861-1865
- It's a hint of the old bombast, the old peacock tail, and reassuring.Margaret Atwood -- Cat's Eye
- His wild bombast was tempered now by senile petulance.Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel
- The letter was full of the usual bombast and fustian I reserved for my periods of anger, but I wanted to appear before the board of education very much.Pat Conroy -- The Water is Wide
- "We mothers—" simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that she was affected, sentimental, bombastic—all the things she hated most.E.M. Forster -- A Room With A View
- The bombastic trickle continued for over three minutes.Christopher Paolini -- Brisingr
bombastic = pompous or pretentious
bombastic = pompous or pretentious talk or writing
bombast = pompous talker (windbag)
bombastic = pompous or pretentious
bombast = high-sounding (pompous) talk or writing
bombast = pompous or pretentious
bombastic = pompous or pretentious