(By the by, this Alphabetical Blogging isn't an April Fools thing – we're really going through A-Z this month)
Ah, B. 2nd place for leading the alphabet. No respect at all. I considered a handful of words before making my choice – including bouyed, badda-bing, bum's rush (rejected for being two words) barbeque, and crowd-favorite boisterous. But no, they all lost out to…
B is for bombastic.
I'm not particularly thrilled with the dictionary definition for it….
: marked by or given to bombast : POMPOUS, OVERBLOWN
So now we gotta look up bombast…
: pretentious inflated speech or writing
Okay, NOW we've got the meat of it.
I really picked the word based on the few lines I remember from the song "Mr. Bombastic" by Shaggy. (and for the record, I'm not much of a reggae; I really only know of this song from an old Levi's commercial.
Bombastic is big. It's hyped. It's braggadocio – another fine fine B-word. It can be negative, like a braggart, or it can be positive, like a smooth operator with a cocky swagger. The positive/negative varies from person to person – one man's confidence is another man's arrogance, after all, and being bombastic tends to run the same way.
Some advertising runs to bombastic. This grates on some and impresses other. Impressions vary, as with practically everything. Bombastic is more about the sizzle than the steak, but if it's done right, the sizzle sells the steak every time.
–Robert