Rodomontade

“Rodomontade” is definitely a bit of a rarity these days, and I think you’re unlikely to hear it from anyone who doesn’t own at least one thesaurus. I think it’s significant that in both of the current news articles I cited above the author was clearly using “rodomontade” to avoid repeating a nearby use of the far more common term “braggadocio,” also meaning “bragging and self-important bluster.” Incidentally, many people assume that “braggadocio” is an Italian word, a logical assumption since “occhio” and “occio” are common intensive endings in Italian. But “braggadocio” was actually invented by the English poet Edmund Spenser as the name of a character in his 1590 epic poem The Faerie Queen by “Italifying” the simple English word “brag” because Italian terms were fashionable in England at the time.

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