Building a Better Vocabulary

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z As this story indicates, hubris comes from Greek, where it originally

meant being “presumptuous toward the gods.”

Bombast (noun)

Pretentious, pompous, grandiloquent speech or writing.

z In the 16th century, bombast referred to cotton padding and

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pillows. This original meaning has shifted to words that are used to

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This word is a perfect example of how many words in our language

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z We often see the adjective form of bombast, bombastic, used

alongside the collocates prose, speech, and writing, as in such phrases

as a politician’s bombastic speech or the author’s bombastic prose.

z Synonyms for bombastic include turgid, orotund, verbose, prolix,

ÀRULG, ÀRZHU\, and pretentious.

ż Turgid comes from a Latin word meaning “to swell” and

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physically swollen things, such as rivers.

ż Orotund comes from the Latin phrase ore rotundo, meaning

“with rounded mouth,” and somewhat paradoxically, has either

a positive or a negative connotation, depending on how it’s

used. Orotund can be positive when referring to a resonant,

booming voice and negative when referring to bombastic

speech or writing.

ż Use verbose when you want to emphasize that the speech uses

more words than needed. Another synonym for overly wordy

language is prolix.