bombast

Meanings

1. Cotton, or cotton wool.
2. Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing, padding.
3. High-sounding words; language above the dignity of the occasion; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking.

1. To swell or fill out; to inflate, to pad.
2. To use high-sounding words; to speak or write in a pompous or ostentatious manner.

1. Big without meaning, or high-sounding; bombastic, inflated; magniloquent.

Etymology

From Old French bombace (“cotton, cotton wadding”), from Late Latin bombax (“cotton”), a variant of bombyx (“silkworm”), from Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux, “silkworm”), possibly related to Middle Persian pmbk' (“cotton”), from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.