Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bombast   /bˈɑmbæst/   Listen
noun
Bombast  n.  
1.
Originally, cotton, or cotton wool. (Obs.) "A candle with a wick of bombast."
2.
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."
3.
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."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Bombast" Quotes from Famous Books



... (for I believe Garrick borrowed some of his improvements from Otway's "Caius Marius.") I don't know, and don't care. It is not Shakespeare. It may "show something of the skill of kindred genius," as the preface to the acting edition says it does. I confess I do not see it. I would have such bombast delivered with the traditional accompaniment of red fire; and the curtain should descend majestically to the sound of slow music. That would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... almost unknown during his lifetime, but a small collection of his poems, published after his death, gained him a posthumous recognition as the greatest Danish poet of the 18th century. Stub's style is extremely noble and expressive, devoid of the excessive bombast and sentimentality that many writers then mistook for poetry. He was of a cheerful disposition with a hopeful outlook upon life that only occasionally is darkened by the hardships and disappointments of his own existence. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... by no means such a man; he was kind-hearted to the last degree; and yet, remembering as we do that sly look of humor which lurked always in the corner of his eye, we cannot believe but that in his freer moments he has pricked through many a bag of bombast, and made dashing onslaught upon noisy literary pretension. Of all this, however, we find nothing in the volumes before us,—nothing in his own books. Always, in his contact with the world, he is genial; the face of every friend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... straggling remnant of a sea breeze drifted up the river and tempered the scorching heat. Then the captain of the Honda drained his last glass of red rum in the posada, reiterated to his political affiliates with spiritous bombast his condensed opinion anent the Government, and dramatically signaled the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Nowhere better than the open book of nature, written with God's own finger." We shall see, however, that this "book of nature" taught Paracelsus some very strange lessons. Modesty was not one of these. "Now at this time," he declares, "I, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Bombast, Monarch of the Arcana, was endowed by God with special gifts for this end, that every searcher after this supreme philosopher's work may be forced to imitate and to follow me, be he Italian, Pole, Gaul, German, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com