pomp means show of magnificence; parade; display; power. It carries an Arena rating of 1651, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, pomp ranks #1,440 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #3,208 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #3,410 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #3,963 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
pomp is pronounced /ˈpɒmp/.
Why “pomp” is a great word
A splendid, and often ostentatious, display, ceremony, or celebration, whose lineage runs from the Greek *pompē*—a solemn sending, a procession—through Latin and Old French into English, arriving around the year 1300. Unlike “pageantry,” with its focus on formal, public tradition, or “ostentation,” with its whiff of vulgar pretense, pomp is the quality of magnificence itself, dignified and ceremonial. It is the measured cadence of a state funeral, the glint of gold braid on a uniform in sunlight, and the sonorous peal of bells over an ancient square—the deliberate, heavy beauty we drape over the bare bones of power and mortality, a resonant architecture of occasion built to remind us that some moments are larger than the lives that inhabit them.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English pomp, pompe, from Old French pompe, from Latin pompa (“pomp”), from Ancient Greek πομπή (pompḗ, “a sending, a solemn procession, pomp”), from πέμπω (pémpō, “to send”). The verb is derived from Middle English pompen, from pomp, pompe (see above).
noun
- Show of magnificence; parade; display; power.
- A procession distinguished by ostentation and splendor; a pageant.e.g.“[…] a more beautiful expression of joy and thanksgiving than could have been exhibited by all the pomps of a Roman triumph.” — 1713, Joseph Addison, The Guardian:
verb
- To make a pompous display.e.g.“pomp'd for those hard trifles” — a. 1638 (date written), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Under-woods. Consisting of Divers Poems. (please specify the poem)”, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The Second Volume. […] (Second Folio
- To pamper.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- pomposity 70% match — The quality of being pompous; self-importance. vs pomp →
- ostentation 68% match — Ambitious display; vain show; display intended to excite admiration or applause. vs pomp →
- pageantry 64% match — A pageant; a colourful show or display, as in a pageant. vs pomp →
- fanfaring 63% match — Pomp or activity to call attention to something. vs pomp →
- pompous 61% match — Affectedly grand, solemn or self-important. vs pomp →
- panoply 60% match — A splendid display of something. vs pomp →
- bombastic 60% match — showy in speech and given to using flowery or elaborate terms; grandiloquent; pompous vs pomp →
- bomphiologia 58% match — Exaggeration done in a self-aggrandizing manner, as a braggart; pompous, bombastic speech wherein small or trivial things are described with great, gasping words. vs pomp →