rodomontade or rhodomontade (rod-uh-mon-TAYD, rod-uh-muhn-TAYD, roh-duh-muhn-TAYD) - n., vainglorious boasting, pretentious bluster. adj., pretentiously boastful. v., to boast, talk big.
When that other guy in your rap battle just doesn't live up to his self-hype. When you meet that all-talk bully. And other possible applications. Of the three parts of speech, the noun form is the most common. This is an eponym, created in Middle French after Rodomonte, the braggart king of Algiers in the Italian epic chivalric romances Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love) by Matteo Maria Boiardo and its sequel Orlando Furioso (Orlando Mad) by Ludovico Ariosto. (I especially commend Furioso to anyone who loves a good fun read -- there are several quite readable English translations.) First used in English in 1612, two decades after John Harrington's translation of the latter. As for an example:
For all of its jingoistic rodomontade, the government had no thought-out plan for the war and its aftermath.
---L.
