bombastic
in a sentence

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)

But Uncle Willie was suffering under our father's bombastic pressure, (source)
bombastic = pompous or pretentious

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. (source) Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker, 1995

-with two extremely bombastic Christian names: Alexander and Bonaparte. (source) Agatha Christie, The ABC Murders, 1936

...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... (source)
bombastic = pompous or pretentious talk or writing

It was widely felt, in Savannah at least, that Adler's manner was bombastic and peremptory, that he was an autocrat, and that he stepped on toes needlessly.† (source)

The bombastic trickle continued for over three minutes.† (source) Christopher Paolini, Brisingr, 2008

There were insults exchanged that would long fester, bombast and hyperbole in abundance, and moments when eloquence was brought to bear with a dramatic effect remarkable even in the Commons.† (source) David McCullough, 1776, 2005

Stay out of the light, the gaudy bombastic lights that belonged more properly to an island carnivale.† (source)

It's a hint of the old bombast, the old peacock tail, and reassuring.† (source) Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye, 1988

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.† (source)

show 36 more with this conextual meaning

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.† (source) Pat Conroy, The Water is Wide, 1972

No bombast.† (source)

In the poems with long lines, his ambition did not extend beyond the town of Arzamas; he wanted to keep up with the grownups, impress his uncle with mythologism, bombast, faked epicureanism and sophistication, and affected a precocious worldly wisdom.† (source) Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1958

Pouring out his taunting sarcasm in short, bombastic thunderbolts of gigantic rage, hate and ridicule, day after day, in town after town, he assailed his opponents and their policies with bitter invective.† (source)

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. (source) Christopher DeMuth, After the Ascent

His speeches are outbursts of incredible arrogance, equally powerful and bombastic. (source)

Norris, the unyielding bitter-ender; Adams, the irritating upstart; Webster, the businessmen's beneficiary; Benton, the bombastic bully—of such stuff are our real-life political heroes made.† (source)

Tolstoy then makes a sort of exposition of the plot of KING LEAR, finding it at every step to be stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious and full of incredible events, "wild ravings", "mirthless jokes", anachronisms, irrelevancies, obscenities, worn-out stage conventions and other faults both moral and aesthetic.† (source)

I think the idea first originated in your mind as the result of a chance encounter in a city coffee den with this odd personality with his bombastic Christian names.† (source) Agatha Christie, The ABC Murders, 1936

…some indomitable desperation of undefeat watching that dark interdict ocean across which a grim lightless solitary ship fled with in its hold two thousand precious pounds-space containing not bullets, not even something to eat, but that much bombastic and inert carven rock which for the next year was to be a part of the regiment, to follow it into Pennsylvania and be present at Gettysburg, moving behind the regiment in a wagon driven by the demon's body servant through swamp and plain…† (source)

His bombastic Christian names, his account of his epileptic seizures and of his headaches, his whole shrinking and insignificant personality, struck you as fitting him for the tool you wanted.† (source) Agatha Christie, The ABC Murders, 1936

Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said.† (source) Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, 1900

Things might be different awake; maybe in looking for inner support he would do well to give Settembrini's novel nature a try—rebellious and critical, though sentimental and bombastic, too.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

"We mothers--" simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that she was affected, sentimental, bombastic--all the things she hated most.† (source) E.M. Forster, A Room With A View, 1908

There stood "1650" in ornate numbers, and framing the date were all sorts of curlicued engraved lines, done in the "modern fashion" of the period, bombastic and capricious arabesques and crests that were half stars, half flowers.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.† (source)

His wild bombast was tempered now by senile petulance.† (source)

Even during his early days in politics, when his speeches were full of conventional platform bombast, Lincoln seldom failed to strike the humble manner that was peculiarly his.† (source)

Sometimes, he was a very comfortable person to live with, for all his unfortunate habit of not permitting anyone in his presence to act a lie, palm off a pretense or indulge in bombast.† (source)

Something ate with us; we talked to it and it answered questions; it sat with us before the fire at night and, rousing without any warning from some profound and bemused complete inertia, talked, not to us, the six ears, the three minds capable of listening, but to the air, the waiting grim decaying presence, spirit, of the house itself; talking that which sounded like the bombast of a madman who creates within his very coffin walls his fabulous immeasurable Camelot: and Carcassonne.† (source)

While he was most bombastically agreeing with the coat-man that the weather was warm, he was conscious that he was longing to run childishly with his troubles to the comfort of the fairy child.† (source) Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, 1922

Athelny, with his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature.† (source)

He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly.† (source)

No bombast, no rodomontade, here.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

What constituted man's true state and condition: obliteration in all-devouring, all-leveling community, which was a simultaneously voluptuous and ascetic act; or "critical subjectivity," where bombast and strict bourgeois virtue were at loggerheads?† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

And we are reluctant shades by the roadside, ashamed of our own shadowy security and not in the least inclined to indulge in bombast and rodomontade; but, rather, the spirit of our story has led us here to watch these gray, running, stumbling troops as they swarm now from the woods, urged on by drums, and to gaze into the ordinary face of our companion of so many little years, that kindhearted sinner whose voice we have heard so often, to see him once more before he passes out of view.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.† (source)

they do not know how to speak to men, with false maxims, with bombastic commonplaces! (source) Voltaire, Candide, 1759
bombastic = pompous or pretentious

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; (source)
bombast = high-sounding (pompous) talk or writing

How now, my sweet creature of bombast? (source)
bombast = pompous talker (windbag)

—Bombast! the professor broke in testily.† (source) James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

By a meticulous and merciless splitting of hairs, a gigantic manufacture of classifications and sub-classifications, a colossal display of professorial bombast and flatulence.† (source)

§ 2 /The Language in the Making/—All this jingoistic bombast, however, was directed toward defending, not so much the national vernacular as the national beautiful letters.† (source)

[15] The American newspapers, years ago, passed through such a stage of bombast, but since the invention of yellow journalism by the elder James Gordon Bennett—that is, the invention of journalism for the frankly ignorant and vulgar—they have gone to the other extreme.† (source)

Thus the heroe is always introduced with a flourish of drums and trumpets, in order to rouse a martial spirit in the audience, and to accommodate their ears to bombast and fustian, which Mr Locke's blind man would not have grossly erred in likening to the sound of a trumpet.† (source) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749

Sophia, confused as she was, answered this bombast (and very properly I think) with a look of inconceivable disdain.† (source) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749

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bombasticin a sentence

bombastic
in a sentence