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''bloviate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260921231859-00-⌔

bloviate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

bloviate (third-person singular simple present bloviates, present participle bloviating, simple past and past participle bloviated)

  • (intransitive, US) To speak or discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner.12
    • ✤ 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.3
    • ✤ His passion when bloviating was furious and terrible to look upon; but there was nothing to it more than sound and pretense.4
    • ✤ “The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me,” he said on “This Week,” the ABC News program.5
    • ✤ And in turn, more complex ones: could his son have become Boris Johnson, bloviating commentator and one-time prime minister of Britain, without one [a nanny]?6

Etymology

1845,78 US, Ohio,9 from blow (“speak idly, boast”) +‎ -i- +‎ -ate, by analogy with deviate.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈbloʊ.viˌeɪt/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-21.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Bloviate”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC. ↩

  2. “In Defense of Harding the Bloviator”, Ben Zimmer, Word Routes: Exploring the Pathways of our Lexicon, July 29, 2010 ↩

  3. 1845 October 14, Huron Reflector, Norwalk, Ohio: ↩

  4. 1887, James O’Meara, The Vigilance Committee of ‘56 ‎: ↩

  5. 2012 May 31, Clyde Haberman, quoting George F. Will, “Trying to Solve the Great Trump Mystery”, in The New York Times ‎, archived from the original on 25 June 2024: ↩

  6. 2023 April 29, Lou Stoppard, “Inside the world of the elite nanny”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC: ↩

  7. James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Bloviate”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC. ↩

  8. “In Defense of Harding the Bloviator”, Ben Zimmer, Word Routes: Exploring the Pathways of our Lexicon, July 29, 2010 ↩

  9. Michael Quinion (March 13, 1999), “Bloviate”, in World Wide Words. ↩

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