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It's not as if the word "bloviate" was invented the day of the Congressional hearings on steroids, but it sure seems that way. People are jumping on the bloviate bandwagon faster than they hopped up to go hayriding with Valparaiso in '98. Writing about Congressmen bloviating has become a bloviation in itself.
That's not to say we did not endure quite the Bloviathon last week in Washington D.C. Whatever your views on steroids are, "bloviate" was a perfect word to use with regard to the many of the participants, and I understand why people fell in love with it even and began using it even though it wasn't part of their normal vocabulary. Just noting here that the word's tipping point has sprinted by with the speed of a bloviate-powered missle. It has gone from clever to cliché that fast.
bloviate, v.
Prob. < BLOW v.1 + -viate (in e.g. DEVIATE v., ABBREVIATE v., etc.); cf. -ATE3.]
intr. To talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.
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. 1887 Amer. Missionary Sept. 258 And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically? 1923 N.Y. Times 23 Aug. 14/4 We all like to bloviate against ‘corporations’, and there is no tenderness in New Jersey for the Public Service Railway Company. 1957 Amer. Hist. Rev. 62 1014 Occasionally a candidate makes some great pronouncement or drastic shift of position in such an oration, but more often he merely talks, or, as Harding put it, ‘bloviates’, being concerned more with the political effect of his remarks than with their meaning. 2002 Mother Jones May-June 82/2 Chávez seems enamored of the sound of his own voice, and he has an unpopular habit of taking over Venezuela's TV and radio stations to bloviate about his reforms.
On a related note, Matt Welch at Reason's Hit and Run mentioned that the English language's Canutes have been busy trying to rid the American tongue of recent Britishisms, to no avail but much consternation (their own):
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/03/nevermind_the_b.shtml#008888
Bloviation about bloviation, if you asked me.
Welch, by the way, used bloviate before it got tired ...
http://www.mattwelch.com/FreelanceSave/OCRroids.htm
This adds little value to the discussion; I just ran across it a while back.
On the Britishism front, I expect some deal between player and owner to someday be reported as "today the Dodgers and Eric Gagne agreed a contract..."
Poems about pandemics? Hmm..
The noblest soul embiggens the smallest man!
Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.
I was hoping no one would catch the misspelling.
Bob, scan down about half a page.
Ironically, I found this after our discussion. It appears "cromulent" has become, of all things, a cromulent word!
:)
Isn't that the name of that meglomaniacal arch criminal bent on world domination that James Bond spent five movies in the 60's trying to stop?
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