magniloquent

adjective

mag·​nil·​o·​quent mag-ˈni-lə-kwənt 

: speaking in or characterized by a high-flown often bombastic style or manner

magniloquent boasts

magniloquently adverb

Did you know?

Magnus means "great" in Latin; loqui is a Latin verb meaning "to speak." Combine the two and you get magniloquus, the Latin predecessor of magniloquent. English-speakers started using magniloquent in the 1600s, despite having had its synonym grandiloquent since the 1500s. (Grandiloquent comes from Latin grandiloquus, which combines loqui and grandis, another word for "great" in Latin.) Today, these synonyms continue to exist side by side and to be used interchangeably, though grandiloquent is the more common of the two.

Examples of magniloquent in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The personality cult is blessedly absent from Friend—according to Immanuel Kim, this is typical of later works of North Korean literature—and the book is almost entirely free of the magniloquent political declarations that distend many socialist realist works. —Sophie Pinkham, The New York Review of Books, 17 Nov. 2020

Word History

Etymology

back-formation from magniloquence

First Known Use

1640, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for magniloquent

• grandiloquent

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