Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

Rodomontade

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit

Rodomontade od-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-muhn-TAHD is a mass noun meaning boastful talk or behavior. The term is a reference to Rodomonte, a character in Italian Renaissance epic poems Orlando innamorato and its sequel Orlando furioso.

Examples of use

  • A 17th-century example of the term exists in Don Tomazo by Thomas Dangerfield, albeit with a slight alteration of spelling. As the titular protagonist heads towards Cairo with a number of stolen treasures, he is informed by an acquaintance that:
  • A 19th-century example of the use of the term can be found in The Adventures of Captain Bonneville by Washington Irving. Irving used it to describe the behavior of "free trappers", fur trappers who worked freelance and adopted the manner, habits, and dress of the native Americans. When free trappers visited Bonneville's camp, he welcomed them and ordered grog for everyone:
  • Another 19th-century example can be found in Thomas Carlyle's 1829 essay Signs of the Times:
  • Rex Stout uses it in the second Nero Wolfe novel, "The League of Frightened Men," (1935), when Wolfe says, "If Mr. Chapin had . . . restrained his impulse to rodomontade . . ."
  • The word, with its alternative spelling (rhodomontade) is quoted in John Lukacs' book Five Days in London May 1940. While describing the tempestuous days of Churchill's first weeks in office, Lukacs quotes Alexander Cadogan, a bureaucrat with the Foreign Office, counselling Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax who was complaining that he could no longer work with Churchill. Cadogan said:
  • Hannah Arendt describes Adolf Eichmann's boasting as "sheer rodomontade" in Eichmann in Jerusalem:
  • The term was used in Desert Island Discs by the singer Morrissey when describing his own music.
  • William F. Buckley used the word in a May 29, 1995, column in the National Review entitled "What does Clinton have in mind? - Pres. Clinton's attack on conservative radio broadcasts"; Buckley, asking rhetorically whom Clinton was attacking, cited one theory:
  • William Makepeace Thackeray uses the word to describe a letter written by the eponymous hero of 'The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.'.
  • The term was used by W. Somerset Maugham in 'Of Human Bondage' in Athelny's conversation, over tea, with his daughter's suitor. -
  • Vladimir Nabokov criticized Fyodor Dostoevsky for his "gothic rodomontade."

    • References

    Rodomontade Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA