Word of the Day: Bombast

Bombast (bŏm’băst’) means loud-mouthed, inflated speech. Bombast was cotton stuffing used to pad some types of clothing. The adjective is bombastic.

No, really - rent it [V or Vendetta] tonight, adjust your mental filter so you’re expecting a parody of bombastic posturing guff, and I guarantee you’ll be roaring with laughter at least eight times. (The Guardian)

“300” is about as violent as “Apocalypto” and twice as stupid. Adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, it offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s. (NY Times)

Maeve on July 26, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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5 Responses to “Word of the Day: Bombast”

John Hewitt on July 26th, 2008 7:06 pm

I generally hear bombast when it is used in the political arena. It is nice to see that entertainment has plenty of room for the term as well.
nicholas on July 28th, 2008 8:03 am

I had confronted such a word- extravaganza- in a Chinese magazine where it talks about the Olympic Game to be held in China around the corner.

In my opinion, this kind of words are really beyond our common usage of the vocabulary, but it do convey something in a different way and concise to be understood.
Maeve on July 28th, 2008 1:55 pm

Nicholas,
I’m not sure if you mean the bombastic style you sometimes encounter in magazines, or the word “bombast” as a choice for Word of the Day.

So far all the words I’ve written about for WOD are words I’ve seen in newspaper articles.
Bianca on July 30th, 2008 5:36 pm

This reminds me of that song by shaggy, Mr. Bombastic… truly fantastic lol - I wonder what meaning he was refrring to in his song?
Maeve on July 31st, 2008 1:02 pm

Bianca,
I just looked up the lyrics. I think the word is being used mostly because it rhymes with “fantastic.”