To pad out; stuff, as a doublet with cotton; hence, to inflate; swell out with high-sounding or bombastic language.
To beat; baste.
noun.
Cotton; the cotton-plant.
noun.
Cotton or other stuff of soft, loose texture, used to stuff garments; padding.
noun.
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noun.
Figuratively, high-sounding words; inflated or extravagant language; fustian; speech too big and high-sounding for the occasion.
noun.
Synonyms Bombast, Fustian, Bathos, Turgidness, Tumidness, Rant. “Bombast was originally applied to a stuff of soft, loose texture, used to swell the garment. Fustian was also a kind of cloth of stiff, expansive character. These terms are applied to a high, swelling style of writing, full of extravagant sentiments and expressions. Bathos is a word which has the same application, meaning generally the mock-heroic—that ‘depth’ into which one falls who overleaps the sublime: the step which one makes in passing from the sublime to the ridiculous.” (De Mille, Elements of Rhetoric, p. 225.) Bombast is rather stronger than fustian. Turgidness and tumidness are words drawn from the swelling of the body, and express mere inflation of style without reference to sentiment. Rant is extravagant or violent language, proceeding from enthusiasm or fanaticism, generally in support of extreme opinions or against those holding opinions of a milder or different sort.
High-sounding; inflated; big without meaning.