Dictionary Definition
grandiloquent adj
1 lofty in style; "he engages in so much tall
talk, one never really realizes what he is saying" [syn: magniloquent, tall]
2 puffed up with vanity; "a grandiloquent and
boastful manner"; "overblown oratory"; "a pompous speech";
"pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey"- Newsweek
[syn: overblown,
pompous, pontifical, portentous]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
From grandiloquus < grandis + loquorPronunciation
- /gɹænˈdɪl.ə.kwənt/ /gr
Extensive Definition
Grandiloquence is speech or
writing marked by pompous or bombastic diction. It is a combination of
Latin word "grandis" (great) and "loqui" (to speak).
The 29th
President of the United States, Warren
Gamaliel Harding, is often considered a grandiloquent speaker.
His style of speaking was somewhat unusual, even in his age. The
following is an example of his unusual and grandiloquent word
speech:
- ''"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality…."''
William
Gibbs McAdoo believed Harding's speeches consisted of "an army
of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an
idea."
Senator Robert C.
Byrd from West
Virginia lost his position as majority leader in 1989 because
his colleagues felt his grandiloquent speeches, often employing
obscure allusions to ancient Rome
and Greece,
were not an asset to the party base. This trait has been
exemplified by oratory
quoting Shakespeare
upon the death of his
little dog
Billy.
See also
- Nonscience (book)
Sources
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Gongoresque, Johnsonian, affected, aggrandized, amplified, aureate, ballyhooed, bedizened, big-sounding,
bloated, bombastic, convoluted, declamatory, disproportionate,
elevated, euphuistic, exaggerated, excessive, exorbitant, extravagant, extreme, flamboyant, flaming, flashy, flatulent, flaunting, flowery, formal, fulsome, garish, gassy, gaudy, grandiose, grandisonant, high-flowing,
high-flown, high-flying, high-sounding, highfalutin, hyperbolic, inflated, inkhorn, inordinate, labyrinthine, lexiphanic, lofty, lurid, magnified, magniloquent, meretricious, orotund, ostentatious, overblown, overdone, overdrawn, overelaborate, overemphasized, overemphatic, overestimated, overgreat, overinvolved, overlarge, overpraised, oversold, overstated, overstressed, overwrought, pedantic, pompous, pontifical, pretentious, prodigal, profuse, puffed, rhetorical, self-important,
sensational,
sensationalistic,
sententious,
showy, solemn, sonorous, stilted, stretched, stuffy, superlative, swollen, tall, tortuous, touted, tumid, turgid