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/bˈɑmbæst/ Listen

noun

Bombast n.

Originally, cotton, or cotton wool. (Obs.) "A candle with a wick of bombast."

Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing; padding. (Obs.) "How now, my sweet creature of bombast!" "Doublets, stuffed with four, five, or six pounds of bombast at least."

Fig.: High-sounding words; an inflated style; language above the dignity of the occasion; fustian. "Yet noisy bombast carefully avoid."

verb

Bombast v. t. To swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate. (Obs.) "Not bombasted with words vain ticklish ears to feed."

adjective

Bombast adj. High-sounding; inflated; big without meaning; magniloquent; bombastic. "(He) evades them with a bombast circumstance, Horribly stuffed with epithets of war." "Nor a tall metaphor in bombast way."

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Etymology of 'Bombast'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Bombast" Quotes from Famous Books

... disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style—I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and ...

— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... are human still, certainly, yet genuine patriotism appears to be a sine qua non now, where bombast answered in the old day. Corruption is no longer accepted. Public men then were surprisingly simple, surprisingly cheap and limited in their methods. There were two rules for public and private life. It was thought quixotic, I gather from studying the documents ...

— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... plenty of time yet. Liberty, my dear Miss Rossano, will restore your father to health, and he will not lose his share of the glory." We English always excuse a foreigner who shows a tendency to bombast in conversation; and allowing for her partial knowledge of the language, and for the oratorical turn her people have, I saw nothing overstrained in the little woman's raptures. I had even a modified belief in their reality; and even to this ...

— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... openly avowed that to-day, he should 'carry off Miss Sybil Lamotte, in spite of her high and mighty family, and in the face of all the town.' Of course, no one who heard regarded these things, save as the bombast of a half drunken braggart and liar. To-day, young Evarts and his still wilder chum, encountered him just setting forth with his fine turnout and wonderfully gotten up. They jested on his fine appearance, and for once he evaded their questions, and seemed anxious to be rid of them. This piqued ...

— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... communicates with the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast; we tremble at his audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is justified by the result. The only exception that I can remember is the passage in 'The English Mailcoach,' where his exaggerated patriotism leads him into what ...

— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

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