bombast
To swell or fill out; to inflate, to padTo swell or fill out; to inflate, to pad.
» Tom was full of bombast and pride until a dart flew straight into his forehead.
Eccles17 · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
2 sensesTo swell or fill out; to inflate, to pad.
To use high-sounding words; to speak or write in a pompous or ostentatious manner.
Examples
1 sentencesTom was full of bombast and pride until a dart flew straight into his forehead.
Origin
From Old French bombace (“cotton, cotton wadding”), from Late Latin bombax (“cotton”), a vFrom 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”.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
bombasts, bombasting, bombasted, bombastedLessons for this word
3 lessons- A1Present simple — Because it is a verb
- A1Past simple, regular verbs — Because of its past form
- A2Present perfect: introduction — Because of its past participle
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.