What A Load Of It

Names haven’t been changed to protect the innocent, because they weren’t

1857, American English, a Midwestern word for "to talk aimlessly and boastingly; to indulge in 'high falutin'," according to Farmer (1890), who seems to have been the only British lexicographer to notice it. He says it was based on blow (v.) on the model of deviate, etc.

It seems to have been felt as outdated slang already by late 19c. ("It was a leasure for him to hear the Doctor talk, or, as it was inelegantly expressed in the phrase of the period, 'bloviate' ...." ["Overland Monthly," San Francisco, 1872, describing a scene from 1860]), but it enjoyed a revival early 1920s during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who wrote a notoriously ornate and incomprehensible prose (e.e. cummings eulogized him as "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors") at which time the word took on its connection with political speech; it faded again thereafter, but, with its derivative, bloviation, it enjoyed a revival in the 2000 U.S. election season that continued through the era of blogging. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Anu Garg’s daily word is far more than simply educational, informative, it’s totally entertaining. And it -- calls to mind. This morning’s word is bloviate which it turns out has a pseudo etymology tied falsely to Latin. It’s just a made up word, a verb that essentially says what a blowhard does, shoots off his mouth meaninglessly. Well, his/her.

In my Navy years I met two people who were gifted beyond measure in bloviation, both of whom our higher command called upon to write the commendations for the military medals that we were awarded upon leaving our dangerous desk jobs. One was a GS-15 named Roy, who reported to me in my last duty station in Washington, DC, but whom the admiral always assigned to write the really fancy HS. When Roy wasn’t working on some officer’s medal, he was busy writing the gibberish for his own annual performance rating. The other was a USAF lieutenant colonel named Gene, whose only gift so far as I knew then and still recall today forty years later, was bragadocious BS passed off as reality. Gene had played football somewhere but even in our thirties couldn’t let it go, and epitomized the stupid one who proceeded successfully through life with scar tissue instead of brain tissue. For lieutenant colonel Gene, I should spell BS out, because its full degree of contemptibleness doesn’t register without the vulgarity, but I won’t, because preachers never cuss.

Come to think of it, we had a couple of other bloviators at that same command, both high rankers, GS-14s. One named Natalie, of which I shall say no more, not only for social reasons, but because in three years of working near her I never understood one sentence she said; but to her credit, the colonel was snowed. The other was Wayne, on the job a good and competent man, whom our colonel also assigned to write the gobbledygook for our medals. No, by God, come to think of it, at that command we also had a pompous self-afflicted AH named Henry who, God help us, bloated himself all the way up to general officer rank in the Army Reserve. Which confirmed various convictions from observations compiled over my twenty-year career. About the senior service, and about reserve officers, and about bloviation. You can’t fool your subordinates or peers, but you sure as hell can fool your superiors. That duty station was in the midwest, and that’s all I’m saying by way of ID, leaving full disclosure to Edward Snowden.

And hell is a place, not a cuss word.