Literary notes about Grandiloquent (AI summary)
Writers often employ the term "grandiloquent" to evoke language or gestures that are remarkably pompous, theatrical, and ornate. Its use can lend a sense of bombast to dialogue or narrative style—for instance, characters might resort to elaborate speeches or exaggerated gestures that underscore their authority or emotional flair ([1], [2], [3]). At other times, the word serves an ironic function, highlighting the discrepancy between ostentatious expression and straightforward reality, as in comments that poke fun at lofty prefaces or overblown rhetoric ([4], [5], [6]). Overall, "grandiloquent" remains a versatile descriptor, capable of both admiring refined expressiveness and critiquing needless verbosity.
- The debts still pursued him, and after two years of grandiloquent misfortune he was thrown into the poor-debtors' prison.
— from English Literature by William J. Long - He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture and—fell fainting into Perinaud's arms.
— from The Pursuit by Frank (Frank Mackenzie) Savile - When the moment demands it, he is pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes involved and obscure.
— from By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy by George Gissing - Notwithstanding that our preface is so grandiloquent, the story opens, the reader will observe, very modestly.
— from A Blundering Boy: A Humorous Story by Bruce Weston Munro - Do those grandiloquent gentlemen state anything better than Epicurus in opposition to these two things which distress us the most?
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - We prospected and took up new claims, put “notices” on them and gave them grandiloquent names.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain
