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Thursday August 5, 2004

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bloviate \BLOH-vee-ayt\ , intransitive verb:
To speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner.

Anyone who has ever spent an idle morning watching the Washington talk shows has probably wondered: how did these people become entitled to earn six-figure salaries bloviating about the week's headlines?
-- Robert Worth, "Quick! The Index!", New York Times, June 3, 2001

After five years as president and thirty years as a political figure, this colossal oaf is still unable to discipline his urge to . . . bloviate.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., American Spectator, December 19, 1997

We follow him minute by minute through a day in his office -- bloviating amiably with colleagues on the telephone, letting his secretary rewrite his clumsy letters and worrying about the possible hatred of his subordinates.
-- John Brooks, "Fiction of the Managerial Class", New York Times, April 8, 1984

Bloviate is from blow + a mock-Latinate suffix -viate. Compare blowhard, "a boaster or braggart." Bloviation is the noun form; a bloviator is one who bloviates.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for bloviate

 

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