Bombast

Origin

From Old French bombace ("cotton, cotton wadding")

Full definition of bombast

Noun

1. Originally, cotton, or cotton wool.
• Luptona candle with a wick of bombast
2. Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing; padding.
• ShakespeareHow now, my sweet creature of bombast!
• Stubbesdoublets, stuffed with four, five, or six pounds of bombast at least
3. (figuratively) High-sounding words; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking; language above the dignity of the occasion.
• DrydenYet noisy bombast carefully avoid.
• 1898, s:Author:William Graham Sumner, s:War and Other Essays Chapter s:The Conquest of the United States by Spain, Upon a little serious examination the off-hand disposal of an important question of policy by the declaration that Americans can do anything proves to be only a silly piece of bombast.

Synonyms

• (cotton or cotton wool) fustian
• (high-sounding words) bombard phrase (obs.), fustian, grandiloquence

Verb

1. To swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate.
• 1839, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. Chapter , Ib. Their doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his bombasted words do signify nothing more than before was easily known by common familiar terms.

Adjective

1. High-sounding; inflated; big without meaning; magniloquent; bombastic.
• ShakespeareHe evades them with a bombast circumstance,
  Horribly stuffed with epithets of war.
• CowleyNor a tall metaphor in bombast way.