First it was palaver (to ramble unnecessarily), then it was bromide (platitudinous and boring), now we can add bloviate and hirsute to our arsenal of awesome words found from political commentary.
Bloviate [bloh-vee-eyt]
adj. to talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way
Bloviate is a compound of blow with a pseudo-Latin ending. It was popularized by none other than former President Warren Harding, who was apparently an expert at it, in the 1850s - he used to describe it as "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing". This reminds me of Fedspeak, which refers to the incomprehensible jargonistic dialect of Greenspan when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Hirsute [hur-soot, hur-soot]
adj. hairy; shaggy
From The New Yorker, "often dismissed even on the right as a hirsute blowhard, [paleo-con John] Bolton appears to have persuaded Romney to take him seriously".
I love election commentary: it teaches me new creative ways to insult people! Especially meat-head jocks who might not understand the insults themselves, such as the kind typically found at upcoming five-year high school reunions.
I doubt bloviate would be used to refer to the language of meat-head jocks. Hirsute, perhaps their chests.
ReplyDeleteJohn