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Sat 19 Aug, 2006 02:51 pm
I've been racking my brain trying to recall this word. I had a fitting occasion to use it the other day but couldn't remember it. It's very obscure. I looked at all the thesauruses, etc. but all to no avail.
It describes a pompous person who uses an excessive amount of big, fancy words; a person who is trying to impress someone but ends up sounding silly.
The word isn't: pedantic, ostentatious, pretentious. It's word specific.
Thanks for any assistance.
Pseudo-intellectual comes to mind.
Could be......
Definition:
speak pompously: to speak about something in a knowing and self-important way, especially when not qualified to do so
I almost know what you mean (I throw big words in with poor diction and poetic license, which leads others to roll eyes) - but can't think of it immediately.
Circumlocution only comes close, but it's not quite it. Dyslexia knows, but sometimes he gets the letters wrong.
Good answer, Roger. And, equally good quip.
Okay, thanks everyone. The word I was trying to recall is:
Bombastic.
That was fun. How about another one, easyasabc?
er, bombastic is not the word...
bom·bast [ bóm bàst ]
noun
Definition:
pompous language: language that is full of long or pretentious words, used to impress others
[Late 16th century. Alteration of Old French bombace "cotton stuffing," via medieval Latin bombax "cotton" < Greek bombux "silk, silkworm"]
bom·bas·tic [ bom bástik ] adjective
bom·bas·ti·cal·ly [ bom bástiklee ] adverb
Yah, so, it isn't the word in my mind, scouring my mind as we talk. Bombastic has a connotation in usage of, y'know, Mussolini at his balcony in piazza Venezia. Not for use of multiply syllabic words of some intellectual import, or perhaps obfuscation.
Not to argue that that was that site's def of bombastic. Just not what is the particular word for using a forest of four or more syllable words, seeming to clarify but often not doing so.
This all being arguable. Listen to farmerman when he gets going. Man knows the words, and they specifically apply to what he is talking about, and are thus quite clarifying, once you look them up.
Thas total bullshit. I makes up haldf of em. Your job is to figure out which half. I think Timber pulls more words out of his ...place he keeps big words to pull out... and so does set and spendi, although spendi is lost in another epoch.
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