Definition of pompous in English:

adjective

• 1Affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.

  ‘a pompous ass who pretends he knows everything’

  More example sentences

  • ‘You also said that your Dad always taught you that being pompous and self-important was just about the greatest sin of all.’
  • ‘Keith was painted as patronising and pompous, with a grandiose idea of her own importance.’
  • ‘Still, many Panelists who accepted the usage also remarked that it was pretentious or pompous.’
  • ‘They look a little deeper into the matter without being pompous, arrogant or patronising.’
  • ‘Amrish Puri stars in one of the tales as a vain and pompous man.’
  • ‘I don't think anyone could read this behaviour in any other way than being pompous and patronising.’
  • ‘He'll have to swallow that pompous, condescending smile of his once he sees my marks.’
  • ‘But saying something on a grand scale is what fools or pompous pundits usually do.’
  • ‘Fifth, the remedy cannot be pompous pontification or moral policing.’
  • ‘Many of the most pompous and arrogant men I've ever met have been obsessed by upgrading their flight tickets.’
  • ‘Taking an aristocrat's pompous and often unrealistic pontifications as an ideal for living is clearly not a good thing.’
  • ‘Lord Irvine has always been portrayed as a pompous and arrogant.’
  • ‘Technical people too often seem distant, effete, imperious, and even pompous.’
  • ‘As if his letters were not a true indicator of his pompous attitude, Donovan in person was pretentious and rude.’
  • ‘He is arrogant, pompous, never misses a chance to show off his superiority, and drinks to excess.’
  • ‘I was pompous, arrogant and so full of my self that I thought that I could do anything.’
  • ‘Aristotle's critics have pounced upon this sentence as an example of pompous obscurantism.’
  • ‘There was rarely anything vicious about these jokes: they were leg pulling jokes which only the sensitive and pompous found annoying.’
  • ‘I've just deleted a very long and somewhat pompous sociology essay that you probably wouldn't have been able to bear reading all the way through.’
  • ‘It is here that Nazneen is to spend the rest of her days married to Chanu Babu - a pompous yet discreetly sensitive man twenty years her senior.’

  Synonyms

  self-important, imperious, overbearing, domineering, magisterial, pontifical, sententious, grandiose, affected, stiff, pretentious, puffed up, arrogant, vain, haughty, proud, conceited, egotistic, supercilious, condescending, patronizing

  bombastic, high-sounding, high-flown, lofty, turgid, grandiloquent, magniloquent, ornate, overblown, overripe, inflated, rhetorical, oratorical, declamatory, sonorous, portentous, pedantic, boastful, boasting, bragging, braggart, Falstaffian

  View synonyms

• 2archaic Characterized by pomp or splendour.

  ‘processions and other pompous shows’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The pompous, splendid Library, on the other hand, visually overwhelms its contents.’
  • ‘Walton is splendidly pompous and circumstantial when extolling the Babylonian gods.’