rhetorical

1 marked by the use of impressive-sounding but mostly meaningless words and phrases <you can skip over the rhetorical passages and still get the gist of the essay> Synonyms bombastic, flatulent, fustian, gaseous, gassy, grandiloquent, oratorical, orotund, windy Related Words bloated, elevated, florid, flowery, grandiose, highfalutin (also hifalutin), high-flown, high-sounding, inflated, lofty, ornate, pompous, pontifical, pretentious, stilted, tumid, turgid; overdone, verbose, wordy Near Antonyms eloquent, well-spoken; bald, direct, matter-of-fact, plain, plainspoken, simple, stark, straightforward, unadorned, unaffected, unpretentious Antonyms unrhetorical

2 full of fine words and fancy expressions <the new governor delivered a long rhetorical speech about our state's bright future but laid out no specific programs for ensuring it> Synonyms aureate, florid, grandiloquent, highfalutin (also hifalutin), high-flown, high-sounding, magnific, ornate, purple, flowery (also rhetoric)Related Words affected, bloated, fancy-pants, grandiose, inflated, pompous, pretentious, stilted; excessive, flattering, fulsome; boastful, bombastic; elevated, eloquent, lofty; bookish, inkhorn, learnedNear Antonyms prosaic, unpoetic; bald, direct, lean, matter-of-fact, plain, plainspoken, simple, spare, stark, straightforward, unadorned; natural, unaffected, unpretentious

3 of or relating to words or language <the next war that those two nations fight won't be rhetorical—it will be with bombs and bullets> Synonyms lexical, linguistic (also linguistical), verbal (also rhetoric), vocabular, wordyRelated Words communicative, conversationalAntonyms nonlexical, nonlinguistic, nonverbal