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Harangue vs Bombast - What's the difference?

harangue | bombast |

As verbs the difference between harangue and bombast

is that harangue is while bombast is to swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate.

As a noun bombast is

originally, cotton, or cotton wool.

As an adjective bombast is

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

harangue

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • An impassioned, disputatious public speech.
  • A tirade or rant, whether spoken or written.
    • She gave her son a harangue about the dangers of playing in the street.
    The priest took thirty minutes to deliver his harangue on timeliness, making the entire service run late.
  • * 1895 , , Ch X:
    • But he continued his harangue without waiting for a reply.

    Synonyms

    * (tirade or rant): admonition, condemnation, criticism, diatribe, polemic, rant, screed, tirade

    Verb

    (harangu)
  • To give a forceful and lengthy lecture or criticism to someone.
    • The angry motorist leapt from his car to harangue the other driver.
  • * 1814 , , Ch XV:
    • This picture of her consequence had some effect, for no one loved better to lead than Maria; and with far more good-humour she answered, "I am much obliged to you, Edmund; you mean very well, I am sure: but I still think you see things too strongly; and I really cannot undertake to harangue all the rest upon a subject of this kind. There would be the greatest indecorum, I think."

    Synonyms

    * admonish, berate, lecture

    Related terms

    * haranguer

    References

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    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.