Verb – Bloviate
This word was coined in the US in about 1845, probably from the word “blow,” as in “to blow hot air:” to lie or exaggerate as you brag or make claims or promises.
To bloviate is to talk for a long time in a self-important way–often while lying, bragging, and/or exaggerating.
Pronunciation:
BLOW vee ate
Part of speech:
Verb, the intransitive kind: “he just keeps bloviating,” “she bloviated about it for an hour.”
Other forms:
bloviated, bloviating, bloviation(s), bloviator(s)
How to use it:
Use this rare, funny, informal word to call attention to how annoying it is when people–especially politicians and political commentators–run their mouths.
Talk about people bloviating about or over certain topics, bloviating against other topics, bloviating at people or in other people’s faces, and just plain bloviating.
Or, call people bloviators, or just describe them with the adjective “bloviating:” “These bloviators love to hear themselves talk.” “This bloviating presenter needs to wrap it up.”
examples:
“This was one of those occasions when men, especially those of us in the media accustomed to our own freedom to bloviate, were best served trying to listen and learn.”
— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon, 29 September 2018
“Flannel-wearing Gen X slackers immediately seized on Clinton as the ‘cool’ candidate even though he was a middle-aged southern man playing thirty-five-year-old Elvis tunes in Risky Business sunglasses. Conservative bloviator George Will began a decade of screeds about how the ‘vulgarian’ Clintons were coarsening American culture.”
— Ken Jennings, Planet Funny, 2019