fustianize

Etymology

From fustian + -ize.

fustianize means to write or utter pretentious statements. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.

Why “fustianize” is a great word

FUSTIANIZE — [Verb] To write or speak in a pretentiously lofty, bombastic, or inflated style. From fustian (a coarse cloth, later meaning pompous or inflated language) + -ize (verb-forming suffix). First attested in 1830 in the writing of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Unlike pontificate, which grounds its pomposity in assumed authority, or grandiloquent, which merely describes the lofty quality, to fustianize is to actively weave a tapestry of hollow grandeur. It is the politician wrapping a trivial decree in the parchment of a world-historic proclamation, the sermon where every syllable is gilded with ornament, or the simple thought drowning in a torrent of latinate abstraction—a lonely alchemy that mistakes the weight of the fabric for the worth of the idea.

verb

To write or utter pretentious statements.“What is a poet's love? — / To write a girl a sonnet, / To get a ring, or some such thing, / And fustianize upon it.”