bloviate

Oct. 16th, 2012 07:36 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
bloviate (BLOH-vee-ayt) - v., to speak or write windily, aimlessly, or pompously.


What blowhards do -- thus the blo- part. This is another colorful 19th century mock-Latin Americanism, coined in the early 1850s -- one that hasn't really traveled outside of the States. It was considered old-fashioned slang in the 1890s, but President Warren G. Harding revived the word both by using and performing it, and it has remained current, with a few ups and downs in fashion, ever since.

---L.

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