grandiloquist

plural grandiloquists

1. rareSomeone who is grandiloquent, especially one who makes a living by giving lectures.

   Bill O’Neal is a professional grandiloquist.

   1879 February 6, “Bodenham”, in The Pulaski Citizen, volume 21, number 6, Pulaski, Tenn., column 8

   5 more examples

   Neither do the public concern themselves how he adjuts his oratorical visage to help by his powers of face; nor heed, whether as a grandiloquist he harangues to us out of the clouds; or as a ventriloquist, out of his belly.[…]he unwittingly exhibits the real dimensions of his capacity, for, good man, he lets out, that in his grand speech on Irish Repeal, he figured as a grandiloquist! But Sir Robert must shine as something grand, be it only as a grandiloquist.

   1838, George Merryweather, “Sir Robert Peel’s Oratory”, in Kings, the Devil’s Viceroys and Representatives on Earth, pages 296–298

   Nevertheless, when it came to personal practice and example, nothing can be more manifest than that the great current of his sympathies was with the refining grandiloquists who flourished in the time of the Charleses.

   1874 October, Fitzedward Hall, “The Sources of Standard English. By T. L. Kington Oliphant, M. A., of Balliol College, Oxford. London. 1873.”, in The North American Review, volume CXIX, number CCXLV, Boston, Mass.: James R. Osgood and Company, Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., page 311

   We have a report by one of the neighbors that a fine boy was born at the home of B. F. McDannel’s, who lives three miles nortwest^([sic]) of Giltner, on Monday, June 1st, and that B. F. left immediately for Omaha to consult a grandiloquist to select a name commensurate for the case and the following was received by wire: “Arternus Alvarado, Don Raymon, De Aarsus Turnus McDannel.

   1903 June 5, “Giltner”, in The Aurora Sun, volume XVII, number 929, Aurora, Neb., page 7, column 2

   Under the system which Governor Hughes professes to regard as more representative, Wisconsin is represented in the Federal Senate by an adroit grandiloquist and a multi-millionaire destitute of a single qualification for his high office.

   1909 January 27, “Fruits of the Direct Nomination System”, in The Brooklyn Citizen, volume XLV, number 26, Brooklyn, N.Y., page 4, column 1

   When metaphors vault and infinitives do the splits, / When predicates stumble and a verb masquerades as a noun, / The writer may not be out of his wits / But only a grandiloquist putting us down.

   1984, Merlo J. Pusey, “Slaves of the Pen”, in Ripples of Intuition, Midvale, Utah: Eden Hill, →ISBN, part I (Poetry in Perspective), page 8

comparative more grandiloquist · superlative most grandiloquist

1. raregrandiloquent; bombastic.

   The language is a little too grandiloquist perhaps, but the subject bears it out.

   1838, George Merryweather, “Sir Robert Peel’s Oratory”, in Kings, the Devil’s Viceroys and Representatives on Earth, published by the author, page 295

   2 more examples

   The contempt of that large-minded gentleman (Mr. Roscoe Conkling) is so wilting; his haughty disdain, his grandiloquist swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all the members of this house that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him.

   1884 June 7, “Blaine and Conkling”, in The Buffalo Daily Times, number 231, column 3

   For now I had to call my best friend, Chloe, a twenty-six-year-old self-proclaimed “grandiloquist” drag queen who had promised me I could move in with him when I was finished with school.

   2002, Joe Babcock, The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers, Closet Case Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 2