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Boast vs Bombast - What's the difference?

boast | bombast |

As nouns the difference between boast and bombast

is that boast is a brag, a loud positive appraisal of oneself while bombast is originally, cotton, or cotton wool.

As verbs the difference between boast and bombast

is that boast is to brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself while bombast is to swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate.

As an adjective bombast is

high-sounding; inflated; big without meaning; magniloquent; bombastic.

boast

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) boosten, bosten, from .

Noun

(en noun)
  • A brag, a loud positive appraisal of oneself.
  • (squash) A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.

    • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
  • * 2005 , (Plato), Sophist . Translation by Lesley Brown. .
    • On no account will he or any other kind be able to boast that he's escaped the pursuit of those who can follow so detailed and comprehensive a method of enquiry.
  • To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
  • * (John Milton)
    • Lest bad men should boast / Their specious deeds.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=(Oliver Burkeman)
    • , volume=189, issue=2, page=27, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= The tao of tech , passage=The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about "creating compelling content", or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing",
  • (obsolete) To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
  • * Bible, Psalms xiiv. 8
    • In God we boast all the day long.
  • (squash) To play a .
  • (ergative) To possess something special.
    • Synonyms
    * brag
    Derived terms
    * boastful * boastfully * outboast

    Etymology 2

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (masonry) To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.
    • (Weale)
  • (sculpting) To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.

    • Anagrams

    * * English reporting verbs

    bombast

    English

    Noun

  • Originally, cotton, or cotton wool.
  • * Lupton
    • a candle with a wick of bombast
  • Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing; padding.
  • * Shakespeare
    • How now, my sweet creature of bombast !
  • * Stubbes
    • doublets, stuffed with four, five, or six pounds of bombast at least
  • (figuratively) High-sounding words; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking; language above the dignity of the occasion.
  • * Dryden
    • Yet noisy bombast carefully avoid.
  • *

    • Synonyms

    * (cotton or cotton wool) fustian * (high-sounding words) bombard phrase (obs.) , fustian, grandiloquence

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1839, author=Samuel Taylor Coleridge, title=Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4., chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=Ib. Their doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his bombasted words do signify nothing more than before was easily known by common familiar terms. }}

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • High-sounding; inflated; big without meaning; magniloquent; bombastic.
  • * Shakespeare
    • [He] evades them with a bombast circumstance, / Horribly stuffed with epithets of war.
  • * Cowley
    • Nor a tall metaphor in bombast way.