bluster

What it means

1. countableuncountablePompous, officious talk.

   1 more example

   Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

   2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70

   Synonyms: bombast

2. countableuncountableA gust of wind.
3. countableuncountableFitful noise and violence.

In a sentence

Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70

Where it comes from

1. Middle Low Germanblüstren
2. Middle Englishblusteren“to wander about aimlessly”
3. Englishbluster

From Middle English blusteren (“to wander about aimlessly”); however, apparently picking up the modern sense from Middle Low German blüstren (“to blow violently”; compare later Low German blustern, blistern). Related to blow, blast. Compare also Saterland Frisian bloasje (“to blow”), bruusje (“to bluster”).