Bombast Definition and Examples of Bombast

Bombast Definition and Examples of Bombast A pejorative term for pompous and inflated speech or writing. Adjective: bombastic. Unlike eloquence, a favorable term for forceful and persuasive discourse, bombast generally refers to empty rhetoric or a windy grandeur of language (Eric Partridge). Dickensian Bombast My dear Copperfield, a man who labors under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments before those emoluments are strictly due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally to the honor of his head and of his heart.(Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) Shakespearean Bombast Full thirty times hath Phoebus cart gone roundNeptunes salt wash, and Tellus orbed ground;And thirty dozen moons, with borrowd sheen,About the world have times twelve thirties been;Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,Unite communal in most sacred bands.(Player King in the play within a play in William Shakespeares Hamlet, Act III, scene two) Bombast and Hyperbole Bombast and hyperbole . . . are not interchangeable terms. Hyperbole is a figure of thought and one of the devices used to achieve bombast. Bombast is a stylistic mode, a manner of speaking and writing characterized by turgid and inflated language. The Elizabethans seem to have understood bombast to be more of an acoustic and an almost renegade quality of language, in contrast to rhetoric which was generally organized into a system. . . . Hyperbole shares with bombast the force of exaggeration, but not necessarily its lexical limitlessness and inelegance.​(Goran Stanivukovic, Shakespeares Style in the 1590s. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeares Poetry,  ed. by Jonathan Post. Oxford University Press, 2013) Alexis de Tocqueville on American Bombast I have often noted that Americans, who generally conduct business in clear, incisive language devoid of all ornament and often vulgar in its extreme simplicity, are likely to go in for bombast when they attempt a poetic style. In speeches their pomposity is apparent from beginning to end and, seeing how lavish they are with images at every turn, one might think they never said anything simply. ​(Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835) The Lighter Side of Platitudinous Ponderosity The following remarks on style appeared anonymously in dozens of late-19th-century and early-20th-century periodicals, ranging from Cornhill Magazine and the Practical Druggist to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Monthly Journal. Decide for yourself whether the advice is still appropriate. In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensiveness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency.Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectation.Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast.Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity.Shun double entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully, purely. Keep from slang; dont put on airs; say what you mean; mean what you say; and dont use big words! (Anonymous, The Basket: The Journal of the Basket Fraternity, July 1904) Honey, dont let the blonde hair fool you. Although  bombastic  forms of  circumlocution  should be generally avoided, one mustnt shy away from big words in the right  context.(Aphrodite in Punch Lines.  Xena: Warrior Princess, 2000) Etymology:From Medieval Latin, cotton padding Also Known As: grandiloquence

Basic Guide to Creating Arrays in Ruby

Basic Guide to Creating Arrays in Ruby Storing variables within variables is a common thing in Ruby and is often referred to as a data structure. There are many varieties of data structures, the most simple of which is the array. Programs often have to manage collections of variables. For example, a program that manages your calendar must have a list of the days of the week. Each day must be stored in a variable, and a list of them can be stored together in an array variable. Through that one array variable, you can access each of the days. Creating Empty Arrays You can create an empty array by creating a new Array object and storing it in a variable. This array will be empty; you must fill it with other variables to use it. This is a common way to create variables if you were to read a list of things from the keyboard or from a file. In the following example program, an empty array is created using the array command and the assignment operator. Three strings  (ordered sequences of characters) are read from the keyboard and pushed, or added to the end, of the array. #!/usr/bin/env rubyarray Array.new3.times dostr gets.chomparray.push strend Use an Array Literal to Store Known Information Another use of arrays is to store a list of things you already know when you write the program, such as the days of the week. To store the days of the week in an array, you could create an empty array and append them one by one to the array as in the previous example, but there is an easier way. You can use an array literal. In programming, a literal is a type of variable thats built into the language itself and has a special syntax to create it. For example, 3 is a numeric literal and Ruby is a string literal. An array literal is a list of variables enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas, like [ 1, 2, 3 ]. Note that any type of variables can be stored in an array, including variables of different types in the same array. The following example program creates an array containing the days of the week and prints them out. An array literal is used, and the each loop is used to print them. Note that each is not built into the Ruby language, rather its a function of the array variable. #!/usr/bin/env rubydays [ Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday,Sunday]days.each do|d|puts dend Use the Index Operator to Access Individual Variables Beyond simple looping over an arrayexamining each individual variable in orderyou can also access individual variables from an array using the index operator. The index operator will take a number and retrieve a variable from the array whose position in the array matches that number. Index numbers start at zero, so the first variable in an array has an index of zero. So, for example, to retrieve the first variable from an array you can use array[0], and to retrieve the second you can use array[1]. In the following example, a list of names are stored in an array and are retrieved and printed using the index operator. The index operator can also be combined with the assignment operator to change the value of a variable in an array. #!/usr/bin/env rubynames [ Bob, Jim,Joe, Susan ]puts names[0] # Bobputs names[2] # Joe# Change Jim to Billynames[1] Billy