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pompous
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  • What was his father's Iron Cross worth if the medal could be awarded to a pompous, bigoted man such as this?†   (source)
  • "But it wasn't by some stuffed shirt, pompous, arrogant princeling!"†   (source)
  • We made up names for all the stiff-backed, pompous-looking Indians.†   (source)
  • She would talk herself past the terse woman on the switchboard, and the pompous young fellow in the outer office, and she would reassure her husband that there was no need to feel guilt.†   (source)
  • I always thought it would be something weak, because he doesn't seem as pompous as the others—but it looks like that isn't true at all.†   (source)
  • Tonight he appeared to be a shadow, hanging on every word from this pompous opinionated man.†   (source)
  • He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater, and he looks like a pompous snowman, and he keeps rearranging the stuff in our kitchen cabinets.†   (source)
  • He was short and slight, black-haired and black-eyed, pompous, condescending, and almost as ignorant medically as I was.†   (source)
  • I believe that in the course of the next century the notion that it's a woman's duty to have children will change and make way for the respect and admiration of all women, who bear their burdens without complaint or a lot of pompous words!†   (source)
  • Pompous is a lot more like it.†   (source)
  • They sounded false and pompous, a quotation from somewhere.†   (source)
  • 'Foaly, you pompous centaur,' he barked into his mouthpiece.†   (source)
  • His face was refined but he did not act pompous or overly formal, and while his gown was not that of a rich gentleman, he was well groomed.†   (source)
  • In ancient Greek comedy, there was a character called an eiron who seemed subservient, ignorant, weak, and he played off a pompous, arrogant, clueless figure called the alazon.†   (source)
  • An impersonation of the pompous, blustering second lieutenant.†   (source)
  • Mostly I'm just looking for reasons to hate him because he's such a pompous turd, and the power of that particular emotion will get me through this.†   (source)
  • I swear, the pomposity in this place.†   (source)
  • I sounded pompous and ridiculous.†   (source)
  • I learned an eclectic smattering of Commonwealth law from a traveling barrister too drunk or too pompous to realize he was lecturing an eight-year-old.†   (source)
  • In the general surgery department, I encountered several men who acted like the pompous, stereotyped surgeons.†   (source)
  • But this trick was both pompous and tasteless.†   (source)
  • Never did have a sense of humor, pompous old catfish.†   (source)
  • Birger is…well, more of a pompous fathead than a bad person.†   (source)
  • If she were Martial, her name would have been Agrippina Cassius or Chrysilla Aroman or something equally long and pompous.†   (source)
  • The animal had an ungainly body with a striped beak that it kept tucked against its breast like a pompous old man, a white head and neck, and a sooty torso.†   (source)
  • His speeches were once described as "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea."†   (source)
  • Also at the table were General Thomas Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jeffrey Pelt, the president's national security adviser, a pompous man Ryan had met years before at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies.†   (source)
  • He said his little say so pompously that it struck the three of them as funny.†   (source)
  • A voice-over done by a pompous announcer with a cold war tone.†   (source)
  • My brother might be pompous, but he knows certain things that could prove useful to me.†   (source)
  • He couldn't see patients anymore, and for the first time in his life the pompous donkey found out what it was like to have to be sick and pay another donkey to make you well.†   (source)
  • Even though I hate him and he is a pompous pratboy, I think I may love him.†   (source)
  • But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him.†   (source)
  • There they distilled a homemade brandy that was used as a drink, to light the stove, to disinfect wounds, and to kill cockroaches; they pompously called it "vodka."†   (source)
  • 'You pompous, rotund, neighborly, vacuous, complacent…'†   (source)
  • On the left, Louis Dutetre, a pompous, thin-faced man with sagging black eyebrows from French intelligence whom Phil Grant seemed to know quite well.†   (source)
  • "SPECIAL announcement!" said the loud speaker in a pompous voice.†   (source)
  • She could make out the character of Captain Roberts, heavy and pompous, and surely the one who sidled around was Polegrave, and the one who stamped and roared was Cox.†   (source)
  • Senator Gerald DeBlass was undoubtedly pompous.†   (source)
  • He told me he'd let me know before he reached the pompous idiot and I believe him.†   (source)
  • Why, you pompous, filthy piece of ….†   (source)
  • A reporter and columnist on the business desk, Shavers was as pompous and as awkward at small talk as he thought he was charming; however, he was benign in his self-delusion and touching in his mistaken conviction that he was a spellbinding raconteur.†   (source)
  • Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of a thousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always managed to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, and pompous septons who beset him.†   (source)
  • And yet, as America will learn over the course of the broadcast, the First Lady does not come across as a pompous know-it-all.†   (source)
  • I remember sitting as a freshman listening to the chairman and vicechairman of the honor court intoning very solemnly and pompously about the importance of honor and how you would be kicked out of school if you did not have it.†   (source)
  • Tappan was a pompous, persistent snake, who no doubt sensed the lull in the press coverage of the Amistad case, as well.†   (source)
  • The domovoi's pompous manner cracked as the strain began to tell.†   (source)
  • "Oh, I doubt it," the smaller of the two said pompously.†   (source)
  • He tended to be a bit pompous at times, but he was reliable.†   (source)
  • I thought he was pompous and effeminate.†   (source)
  • Another time some pompous choom proposed that bad breath and body odors be made an elimination offense.†   (source)
  • I mention this because I was talking to a rather pompous Orientalist over the weekend, and at one point, during a very deep, metaphysical lull in the conversation, I told him I had a little brother who once got over an unhappy love affair by trying to translate the Mundaka Upanishad into classical Greek.†   (source)
  • What a pompous-- But Harrison was talking to Withers again, and looking at Hooch as he did so.†   (source)
  • I realized I had become a little pompous, but I was adamant.†   (source)
  • "Rest assured," Control said a little pompously, "that that has been taken care of."†   (source)
  • But in fact it's so pompous just because it is so unimaginative and second-rate.†   (source)
  • A distinguished and glittering gathering of eminent and experienced statesmen, the Senate, as compared with the House of Representatives, was on the whole far more pompous and formal, its chambers far more elaborate, and its members far more concerned with elegance of dress and social rank.†   (source)
  • England needs an heir; certain measures, perhaps regrettable, perhaps not— (Pompous) there is much in the Church that needs reformation, Thomas— (MORE smiles) All right, regrettable!†   (source)
  • "I've told Mr. Crouch that I'll have it ready by Tuesday," Percy was saying pompously.†   (source)
  • 'Dreadful, dreadful,' said Ernie, shaking his head pompously.†   (source)
  • "Alright, I need to check you over," I said pompously.†   (source)
  • I hope you're well?" said Percy pompously, shaking hands.†   (source)
  • SUNLIGHT (loudly, a little pompously): I care about nothing!†   (source)
  • ROPER (Pompously) Et cum spiritu tuo, excellencis!†   (source)
  • "Hermione, a wizard in Mr. Crouch's position can't afford a house-elf who's going to run amok with a wand!" said Percy pompously, recovering himself.†   (source)
  • "How much mercury would it take to reduce two gills of white sulfur?" he asked pompously, as if I'd already given the wrong answer.†   (source)
  • The guides stared at him because he walked so pompously, and the kitchen cadet who had to stay late to serve the food was anxious to go to bed, because he had to rise at four A.M. "Tell me about it," the attorney Giuliani asked, "what it was like.†   (source)
  • Not to speak pompously, what is there in this world but accident--a long, bitter chain of accidents, from algae to reptiles to tortoises and rodents to man?†   (source)
  • The sky was pompously playing neighbor To the unstirring treetops, while the distance Was clamorous with the exchange Of long-drawn clarion calls of roosters.†   (source)
  • Then, pompously: "Human consciousness--an overwhelming joy, a monstrous torture, the most fantastic achievement of the whole fantastic chronicle of time and space: you have it in you but you haven't opened up to it yet, and suddenly it will be too late!†   (source)
  • I'll admit I judged him wrong; I thought him to be a pompous, selfish idiot, but he's not so bad."†   (source)
  • Sophie found the naked man's pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing.†   (source)
  • "Well, I'm afraid I fail to see what you find so pompous about it.†   (source)
  • Gaunt imitated Ogden's voice, making it pompous and singsong.†   (source)
  • I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a — a —†   (source)
  • And you, you are a pompous, narrow-minded old—†   (source)
  • For a second Gudgeon's face glowed with the old pomposity.†   (source)
  • I swallowed, remembered the pompous little man I had disliked so.†   (source)
  • Prakash'd wanted to be infallible, and Professorji'd acted pompous.†   (source)
  • Good, good, he said, just as pompous as a real doctor.†   (source)
  • Percy had bustled over, rubbing his hands together and looking extremely pompous.†   (source)
  • "Pompous old fart," says Colin, to get some of her attention for himself.†   (source)
  • Fortier smiled at the pompous pole of a man.†   (source)
  • Lisbeth liked cocky devils, just as she detested pompous jerks.†   (source)
  • He very soon realized that Paulsson was a pompous, rigid drill-sergeant type.†   (source)
  • The High Septon was as fat as a house, and more pompous and long of wind than even Pycelle.†   (source)
  • But, lobsters and lollipops! it is a good thing the seneschal was a pompous fool.†   (source)
  • I sincerely hope you're right-because that pompous idiot is the Jackal's contact in Montserrat.†   (source)
  • She's appeasing him, but he's far too pompous to realize that.†   (source)
  • Mother interrupted in her best sarcastic, pompous tone, "Mrs.†   (source)
  • Take some pompous holy-faced lawyer down a peg.†   (source)
  • No longer is he so pompous and self-conscious.†   (source)
  • Four Ravenclaws were there, and one Hufflepuff, Ernie Macmillan, whom Harry liked despite his rather pompous manner.†   (source)
  • Teachers found excuses to walk along corridors with him, and Percy Weasley (acting, Harry suspected, on his mother's orders) was tailing him everywhere like an extremely pompous guard dog.†   (source)
  • Though maybe Crake was just being a pompous tightass; maybe Watson-Crick was having a bad effect on him.†   (source)
  • Ernie might be pompous on occasions like this, but Harry was in a mood to deeply appreciate a vote of confidence from somebody who did not have radishes dangling from their ears.†   (source)
  • It was a pompous little sign, neatly lettered by hand the sort of thing that Percy Weasley might have stuck on his bedroom door.†   (source)
  • He's conscious of sounding pompous.†   (source)
  • If anybody has earned the right to be pompous, it should be him because he knows everything and everybody, and technically he is one of the best (if not the best) in the world.†   (source)
  • That's where the real clues were buried, among the veiled threats and pompous promises, the slogans and silliness in that hodgepodge of a will.†   (source)
  • Mr. Wandati's mother was a heavy, rather pompous woman who lived in another part of town, with the obligatory team of servants and her two beloved dogs.†   (source)
  • Jimmy yelled. it was a good word, he'd got it off an old DVD; they'd taken to using it to tear each other down for being pompous.†   (source)
  • No pompous little officer had stood in front of his class and said, "Right, chaps, today we're going to learn how to deal with a particularly nasty little situation that secret agents tend to find themselves in: being bored abso-bloody-lutely rigid.†   (source)
  • Both in art and in real life, we meet pompous and flamboyant forms of self-expression, while at the same time there arose a monastic movement, turning away from the world.†   (source)
  • Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these," said George in a good imitation of Percy's most pompous manner.†   (source)
  • That really sounded pompous.†   (source)
  • There sat my tweed-cap nemesis Mr. Beeman, pompous as ever with his waistcoat and watch chain; Enrique my social worker; Mrs. Swanson the school counselor (the same person who had told me I might feel better if I threw some ice cubes against a tree); Dave the psychiatrist in his customary black Levi's and turtleneck —and, of all people, Mrs. Barbour, in heels and a pearl-gray suit that looked like it cost more money than all the other people in the room made in a month.†   (source)
  • He had always thought of Fudge as a kindly figure, a little blustering, a little pompous, but essentially good-natured.†   (source)
  • " 'Lady Markham, we must be on our way,' " Ann says, in perfect imitation of Lady Denby's pompous voice.†   (source)
  • He sounded idiotic and pompous.†   (source)
  • But I wondered while Prof was talking what these pompous chooms would think if they knew that our "president" was a collection of hardware owned by Authority?†   (source)
  • He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs into the apartment, where he found Aarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly uncomfortable smile.†   (source)
  • He was even more afraid than Amanda, but to make her think this was all routine, he adopted the relaxed, pompous air he had seen doctors use.†   (source)
  • Damned pompous fools.†   (source)
  • He wanted to affect the bored, irritated, arrogant expression common to academic lecturers who are pompous and cruel enough to try to humiliate several hundred people at once.†   (source)
  • Maybe it's imagining Ann squelching her voice to work for pompous aristocrats and their hateful children.†   (source)
  • He could hardly guess that that solemn, cubic, dense, pompous house, which sat like a hat amid its green and geometric surroundings, would end up full of protuberances and incrustations, of twisted staircases that led to empty spaces, of turrets, of small windows that could not be opened, doors hanging in midair, crooked hallways, and portholes that linked the living quarters so that people could communicate during the siesta, all of which were Clara's inspiration.†   (source)
  • The only difference is that the officers don't wear their ranks on their uniforms: they write them after their names and announce them in the degree to which their speech is pompous, mellifluous, and monotonous.†   (source)
  • Clara came to fear him far more than she had when he was a healthy, strong man who disrupted her peaceful life with his scent of the eager male, his hurricane voice, his relentless warfare, and his pompous airs, imposing his will and shattering his whims against the delicate balance she tried to keep between the spirits of the Hereafter and the needy souls of the Here-and-Now.†   (source)
  • Klodwig would have beaten him had Klodwig found out, but Klodwig and his footmen had a pompous step that gave them away in advance of their arrival, and someone moving was far easier to see than someone sitting still.†   (source)
  • 'President' seems a little pompous.†   (source)
  • — nevertheless the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, and neurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompous fraud Karl Marx, nevertheless had a glimmering of a very important truth.†   (source)
  • Daniel Webster, according to his critics, fruitlessly appeased the slavery forces, Thomas Hart Benton was an unyielding and pompous egocentric, Sam Houston was cunning, changeable and unreliable.†   (source)
  • She realized then that she hated George Hanby; he was a pompous, dirty-minded little man, always leering at her and trying to touch her.†   (source)
  • Startled, I realized that Nathan's gifted voice was in perfect mockery of my own—pedantic, pompous, insufferable.†   (source)
  • He gave up the pompous meter and the caesura and cut down the lines to four beats, as you cut out useless words in prose.†   (source)
  • It sounded pompous with the "darling"—already I was talking in a husbandly way—but I somehow had to say it.†   (source)
  • Instead of being natural and spontaneous as we had always been, we began to be idiotically pompous with each other.†   (source)
  • Sententious he might occasionally be, but never pompous, never preacherish in tone, and I relished both the letters' complexity of thought and feeling and their simple eloquence; whenever I finished one I was usually close to tears, or doubled over with laughter, and they almost always set me immediately to rereading passages in the Bible, from which my father had derived many of his prose cadences and much of his wisdom.†   (source)
  • "That was a long time ago," said Eugene, pompously, grinning.†   (source)
  • Their host was telling them pompously that he would have a fountain in the cloister close when they came again.†   (source)
  • He talked to the children aimlessly, pompously, dully for twenty minutes every morning: the teachers yawned carefully behind their hands, the students made furtive drawings, or passed notes.†   (source)
  • "Eight bottles with five balls will entitle you to a genuine gold-headed cane," the barker answered pompously, taking a little wooden cane off the shelf and handing it to Margie.†   (source)
  • He went off pompously toward a group of chaperons in one corner, and just as the two girls had turned to each other to discuss the possibilities of the secret, two old gentlemen bore down on the booth, declaring in loud voices that they wanted ten miles of tatting.†   (source)
  • Indeed, he had scarcely looked at me before with a nod and a jerk like an old raven he began pompously: "Now, you young people have, I believe, very little appreciation of us and our efforts."†   (source)
  • The admired beauties he was often tired of, perhaps because he had heard them so often, and it seemed to him, moreover, that Shakespeare often spoke absurdly and pompously when he might better have spoken simply, as in the scene where, being informed by the Queen of the death of his sister by drowning, Laertes says: "Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears."†   (source)
  • When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale—pompously.†   (source)
  • "We're goin' t' move t'morrah—sure," he said pompously to a group in the company street.†   (source)
  • Swann was beginning, a trifle pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively.†   (source)
  • 'The meaning of my Star is War,' he replied pompously.†   (source)
  • On my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, pompously, "Seven times nine, boy?"†   (source)
  • "Sne-gi-ryov?" the doctor said loudly and pompously.†   (source)
  • "He was a Captain in the —th regiment," said the old gentleman rather pompously.†   (source)
  • "Grospierre was at the gate, keeping good watch," began Bibot, pompously, as the crowd closed in round him, listening eagerly to his narrative.†   (source)
  • Overhead, Handel's March swelled pompously through the imitation stone vaulting, carrying on its waves the faded drift of the many weddings at which, with cheerful indifference, he had stood on the same chancel step watching other brides float up the nave toward other bridegrooms.†   (source)
  • Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality—he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor.†   (source)
  • It is certain that the more reduced and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest flourish.†   (source)
  • Copies were put up at the corners of the streets; and even they who had begun to open negotiations interrupted them, being resolved to await the succor so pompously announced.†   (source)
  • For then the courier (who himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and then her father's valet would pompously induct him into his travelling-cloak; and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was a weight on Little Dorrit's mind—absolutely made her cry at first, she knew so little what to do with her), would be in attendance; and then her brother's man would complete his master's equipment; and…†   (source)
  • …us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.†   (source)
  • 'Come,' said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously, for it was gratifying to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had produced; 'Come, Oliver!†   (source)
  • The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered himself in broken Russian: "Pani Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget all that has happened till to-day—"†   (source)
  • He sent round prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked pompously about making his fortune still.†   (source)
  • Georgy loved the redcoats, and his grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals on their breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented the child as the son of Captain Osborne of the —th, who died gloriously on the glorious eighteenth.†   (source)
  • The English list of ships of war, is long and formidable, but not a tenth part of them are at any one time fit for service, numbers of them not in being; yet their names are pompously continued in the list, if only a plank be left of the ship: and not a fifth part of such as are fit for service, can be spared on any one station at one time.†   (source)
  • But they became stereotyped, pillared, and pompous up at the top fronting the main road.†   (source)
  • Of course, you know, he's an old fool and a pompous fraud who oils his way into everything and…"†   (source)
  • The pomposity of the sciences, societies, and arts disgusted me.†   (source)
  • You are getting very pompous in the early morning, he told himself.†   (source)
  • I hope you haven't come expecting a pompous party."†   (source)
  • Now he talked of his aunt Ettl as an artist and sounded pompous.†   (source)
  • 'I'm sure we shall like whatever you wear,' he said in his most pompous Frankish voice.†   (source)
  • You are too pompous for us, Excellency, too vain and pompous, and not outright enough.†   (source)
  • "My sister's very pompous tonight," said Sebastian, when she was gone.†   (source)
  • I sat up stiff and straight in my seat and with all the poor pomposity of youth.†   (source)
  • I have a good deal against his venerable pomposity myself.†   (source)
  • Aloysius wouldn't approve of that at all, would you, you pompous old bear?"†   (source)
  • "It is the last great music ever written," said I with the pomposity of a schoolmaster.†   (source)
  • He didn't see her; he passed on a new mare which his father had given him, in the coat and hat of a man now; your grandmother said he was as tall as his father now and that he sat the mare with the same swagger although lighter in the bone than Sutpen, as if his bones were capable of bearing the swagger but were still too light and quick to support the pomposity.†   (source)
  • I feel already, though I cannot endure the Doctor's pompous mummery and faked emotions, that things we have only dimly perceived draw near.†   (source)
  • Pompous, you know.†   (source)
  • You're getting awfully pompous.†   (source)
  • Read English news, yes, and English sport, politics, and pomposity, but in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone.†   (source)
  • But for all his habit of making oracular statements and his slightly pompous manner, he was as kindly a man as the town possessed.†   (source)
  • She kindly let me get by most of the time with putting on the dog and pompousness, being a warm girl.†   (source)
  • Sir Mador de la Porte—more pompous than the rest, or more malevolent,, or more of a stickler—ended by voicing the thought which was in every mind.†   (source)
  • Incredible as it now seems, I can remember that one of these pompous houses had a carriage and pair with a coachman and footman who wore powdered wigs, and yellow plush knee breeches and silk stockings.†   (source)
  • …apparently wealthy and with for background the shadowy figure of a legal guardian rather than any parents—a personage who in the remote Mississippi of that time must have appeared almost phoenix-like, fullsprung from no childhood, born of no woman and impervious to time and, vanished, leaving no bones nor dust anywhere—a man with an ease of manner and a swaggering gallant air in comparison with which Sutpen's pompous arrogance was clumsy bluff and Henry actually a hobble-de-hoy.†   (source)
  • He accomplished this—got his plantation to running smoothly (he had an overseer now; it was the son of that same sheriff who had arrested him at his bride-to-be's gate on the day of the betrothal) within ten years of the wedding, and now he acted his role too—a role of arrogant ease and leisure which, as the leisure and ease put flesh on him, became a little pompous.†   (source)
  • There were more shouts of approval, and Rhett Butler who had been lounging negligently against the counter at Scarlett's side whispered: "Pompous goat, isn't he?"†   (source)
  • " I'd laugh out loud at his mixture of pompousness and revolutionist's jargon and his amended Tennessee accent.†   (source)
  • Pork lit one lamp and three candles and, with the pompous dignity of a first chamberlain of the royal bedchamber lighting a king and queen to their rooms, he led the procession up the stairs, holding the light high above his head.†   (source)
  • How pompous and stupid it sounded.†   (source)
  • He would get some loud pompous yokel—the student president of the Y. M. C. A., or the class president—and bear down on him with evil gentle matter-of-factness.†   (source)
  • That strange reluctance of his to talk about Rebecca, his stiff, funny, pompous way of making conversation whenever we had approached anything like intimacy.†   (source)
  • He had the physical tricks of his family, and his smile, when it rarely came, was as lovely as theirs; he spoke, in their voice, with a gravity and restraint which in my cousin Jasper would have sounded pompous and false, but in him was plainly unassumed and unconscious.†   (source)
  • He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.†   (source)
  • On the stage I saw an animal tamer—a cheap-jack gentleman with a pompous air—who in spite of a large moustache, exuberantly muscular biceps and his absurd circus getup had a malicious and decidedly unpleasant resemblance to myself.†   (source)
  • To the girl his voice sounded pompous and heavy.†   (source)
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