blustering
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more blustering
form: most blustering
Etymology: By surface analysis, bluster + -ing.
Senses: examples: text: But when we began to renue our old acquaintance, and to shake the handes of discontinued familiaritie, alas, good Gentleman, his mandillion was ouercropped, his witt paunched like his wiues spindle, his art shanked like a lath, his conceit as lank as a shotten herring, and that same blustering eloquence as bleake and wan as the Picture of a forlorne Loouer.
ref: 1593, Gabriel Harvey, Pierce’s supererogation, or a New Prayse of the Old Asse:
text: Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoilt-child of a semi-barbarous age.
ref: 1820, Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think, volume 1, New York: C.P. Fessende, published 1832, page 173:
text: For once Babbitt did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party going.
ref: 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter IX, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section I:
text: In the old days, such impertinence might have seen Mr Aswani taken directly from the studio to the cells; this time, though, it was the prime minister who paid the price. Rendered a nationwide laughing stock by his blustering performance, he resigned a day later - the first casualty of a new era of Egyptian politics, where ministers’ careers are ended not by presidential decree, or by mass street uprising, but because they themselves feel they have failed.
ref: 2011 March 16, Colin Freeman, “Egypt’s revolution: leaders must obey new rules, but protesters still impatient for elections and change”, in The Daily Telegraph:
glosses: Engaged in or involving the process of blustering, speaking or protesting loudly.
examples: text: The Old Inquirer, said Dick Honesty, in' visiting the sick, has seen too many bold, blustering Infidels, in this nasty condition, to entertain the smallest penchant either for their principles, or their exqusitely delightful exits.
ref: 1820, The Retort Courteous:
text: A BLUSTERING FELLOW ! There 's a deadly bore, Placed in a good man's way, who only yearns For happiness and joy.
ref: 1833, R.G.G., Miscellaneous Tales, Original and Select, in Prose and Verse:
text: Hermann Göring was a dominating and blustering host. His unresting ego did not permit him to permit his guests to do what they pleased; he told them how to entertain themselves, and he told them what to think. When he was with them, he took charge of the conversation; when he chose to be funny, they all laughed, and he laughed loudest.
ref: 1947, Upton Sinclair, “25, I”, in Presidential Mission:
text: At one time there lived here in Switzerland a blustering fellow — I ... I do not overestimate him — by the name of Johannes Scherr. Through his blustering approach and opinions he spoiled many of the sound ideas he presented to the public.
ref: 1991, Rudolf Steiner, Social Issues: Meditative Thinking and the Threefold Social Order, →ISBN:
text: Geoffrey is a more complex person than the blustering character who appears in Act One.
ref: 1999, Willis Hall, Keith Waterhouse, Billy Liar, →ISBN, page vi:
text: When he came up he began pushing our boat aside as he had done the others, and in a blustering manner desired us to allow him to get on, as he was in a great hurry.
ref: 2012, Robert Fortune, A Journey to the Tea Countries of China, →ISBN:
glosses: Pompous or arrogant in one's speech or bearing.
examples: text: The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
text: 1640, George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., in The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert, London: Pickering, 1841, p. 152,
A blustering night, a fair day.
text: Theirs be these holms untrodden, still, and green,
Where leafy shades fence off the blustering gale,
And breathes in peace the lily of the vale!
ref: 1793, William Wordsworth, An Evening Walk, Addressed to a Young Lady:
text: But May, with slumbrous nights, must pass;
And blustering winds will strip the tree.
ref: 1917, Siegfried Sassoon, “A Poplar and the Moon”, in The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, London: William Heinemann, page 86:
text: They ripped out the phone, took Sinatra outside and disappeared into a blustering snowstorm.
ref: 1963 December 20, “There’s Nothing to Be Sorry For”, in Time:
glosses: Very windy; (of wind) blowing very strongly, blustery.
Synonyms: swaggering
braggartry
Derived terms: blusteringly