bloviate

English

WOTD – 30 April 2006

Etymology

1845, US, Ohio, from blow (“speak idly, boast”) + -i- +‎ -ate, by analogy with deviate.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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Verb

bloviate (third-person singular simple present bloviates, present participle bloviating, simple past and past participle bloviated)

1. (US) To speak or discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner.
   • 1845, Huron Reflector, Norwalk, Ohio, 14 Oct. 3/1:

     Peter P. Low, Esq., will with open throat…bloviate about the farmers being taxed upon the full value of their farms, while bankers are released from taxation.

   • 2015 February 8, Michael Cohen, “Trump turns US politics into a (bad) reality show”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     The downside is that Trump’s bloviating risks driving the party even further to the right and further tarnishing the party’s image among non-Republican voters.

Usage notes

Particularly used of politicians, bloviate has passed in and out of fashion over the centuries, falling out of fashion by end of 19th century, but was popularized in the early 1920s with reference to president Warren G. Harding, again in the 1990s, and then once more during the 2000 presidential election, and is currently in popular use in USA.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:talk.

Derived terms

• bloviation
• bloviator

Related terms

• blowhard

Translations

to speak or discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner

• Dutch: oreren (nl)
• French: parler pompeusement

• Romanian: a te lungi, a te lungi cu vorba
• Russian: (colloquial) почесать язы́к (počesatʹ jazýk)

See also

• windbag
• Appendix:Fanciful 19th century American coinages

References

• Allan A. Metcalf (2004), Presidential voices: speaking styles from George Washington to George W. Bush, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, “Once More the Bloviator”, pp. 134–135, →ISBN

Anagrams

• oblative