Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Pretentious boasting or bragging; bluster.
  • adjective Pretentiously boastful or bragging.
  • intransitive verb To boast or brag.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Vain boasting; empty bluster or vaunting; rant.
  • Bragging.
  • To boast; brag; bluster; rant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Vain boasting; empty bluster or vaunting; rant.
  • intransitive verb To boast; to brag; to bluster; to rant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Pretentiously boastful.
  • noun Vain boasting; a rant; pretentious behaviour.
  • verb To boast, brag or bluster pretentiously.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun vain and empty boasting

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, arrogant Saracen leader in Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Boiardo and Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A reference to Rodomonte, a character in Italian Renaissance epic poems Orlando innamorato and its sequel Orlando furioso. Compare rodomontado.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word rodomontade.

Examples

  • That is what is termed a rodomontade of equal foolishness to Gormless Gordon's 'decade of shared prosperity'.

    British Blogs 2010

  • (Survey report 6801 summarizing Adm. 68/195, 156v, and other data in Adm. 68/194 and/196, found in the microfilms of the Virginia Colonial Records Project, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; A letter of Carter's executors to Dawkins 1738 May 10 refers to "your ship Bailey.") [3] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "rodomontade" is "a vainglorious brag or boast; an extravagantly boastful or arrogant saying or speech."

    Letter from Robert Carter to Edward Athawes, July 31, 1731 1731

  • Walpole from then on ridiculed GW, calling him a fanfaron braggart, and saying that he soon “learned to blush for his rodomontade.”

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • Walpole from then on ridiculed GW, calling him a fanfaron braggart, and saying that he soon “learned to blush for his rodomontade.”

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • Despite the author's appealing, quirky sense of humor, her tale disconcerts with tasteless rodomontade more than it describes the fraught challenges in the complex geography of her portfolio.

    C. Christine Fair: Baffled by The Taliban Shuffle C. Christine Fair 2011

  • Ditch the shining rhetoric that lets politicians, with tongues of boughten silver, give Tiffany settings to rhinestone notions, decorate nonsense with bells of ringing phrases and frame their sorry bragging in glittering rodomontade.

    In Vino Veritas P.J. O'Rourke 2011

  • We should try to memorize the meaning of rodomontade and use it in our everyday conversation.

    Think Diouf is vile? Listen to the fans | Kevin McKenna 2011

  • Walpole from then on ridiculed GW, calling him a fanfaron braggart, and saying that he soon “learned to blush for his rodomontade.”

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • I had to look up what rodomontade means and it means arrogant boasting blustering or ranting talk

    Think Diouf is vile? Listen to the fans | Kevin McKenna 2011

  • Walpole from then on ridiculed GW, calling him a fanfaron braggart, and saying that he soon “learned to blush for his rodomontade.”

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • People who use big-sounding words like to think they have an innate sprachgefuhl; in reality, they're just being rodomontade.

    September 6, 2007

  • Can a person "be" rodomontade? Wouldn't people showing off verbally be engaging in rodomontade?

    December 4, 2007

  • From the name of a boastful character, Rodomonte, in the Orlando epics.

    December 4, 2007

  • Also spelt rhodomontade, a form I actually prefer because it means you're allowed to say it with pronounced trilled-r.

    August 15, 2008

  • There are some words that beg to be played.

    They're the stuff from which music is made.

    So let's raise a toast

    To bluster and boast

    And the chance to say rodomontade.

    June 9, 2014