bombast means big without meaning, or high-sounding; bombastic, inflated; magniloquent. It carries an Arena rating of 1500, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bombast ranks #896 of 14,297 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #2,196 of 14,297 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,309 of 14,431 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,340 of 14,361 for Most Ingenious Words.
bombast is pronounced /ˈbɒmbæst/.
Why “bombast” is a great word
Marked by inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing. From Old French *bombace* ("cotton, cotton wadding"), from Late Latin *bombax* ("cotton"), a variant of *bombyx* ("silkworm"), from Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux, "silkworm"), with the sense shifting from literal padding to inflated language by the 1580s. Unlike "grandiloquent," which suggests a loftiness that can approach eloquence, or "verbose," which merely indicates a surplus of words, bombast is sound without substance, a desperate inflation of style to conceal a vacuum of thought. It is the stuffed shirt at the podium booming with cotton, the press release that says nothing in twelve syllables where three would do, the velvet-draped lie that swells until it brushes the ceiling—all that synthetic padding, which when pressed yields nothing but air and the tragic comedy of someone trying to sound important by saying nothing at all.
Etymology
From Old French bombace (“cotton, cotton wadding”), from Late Latin bombax (“cotton”), a variant of bombyx (“silkworm”), from Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux, “silkworm”), possibly related to Middle Persian pmbk' (“cotton”), from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.
adj
- Big without meaning, or high-sounding; bombastic, inflated; magniloquent.“But he (as louing his owne pride, and purpoſes) / Euades them, with a bumbaſt Circumſtance, / Horribly ſtufft with Epithites of warre, / Non-ſuites my Mediators.”
noun
- Cotton, or cotton wool.“SURBATING; a Diſtemper in a Horſe, who is ſaid to be ſurbated, when the Sole is worn, bruiſed or ſpoiled by travelling without Shoes, or with ill ſhoeing: [...] take Frankincenſe, and rolling it in a little fine Cotton Wool or Bombaſt, with a hot Iron melt it into the Foot betwixt the Shoe and the Toe, until the Orifice, where the Blood was taken away, is fill'd up; [...]”
- Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing, padding.“[C]ertayne I am there was neuer any kinde of apparell euer inuented, that could more diſproportion the body of man, then theſe Dublettes with great bellies hanging downe beneath their Pudenda, (as I haue ſayd) & ſtuffed with foure, fiue, or ſixe pound of Bombaſt at the least: [...]”
- High-sounding words; language above the dignity of the occasion; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking.“Bombaſt and Buffoonry, by Nature lofty and light, ſoar higheſt of all, [...]”
verb
- To swell or fill out; to inflate, to pad.“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.”
- To use high-sounding words; to speak or write in a pompous or ostentatious manner.“[']The ugly truth is, Gerald,' she said viciously, 'that you're a phoney, a rotten, bombasting phoney, trying to cover up from all the world,[…][']”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.