Today I googled “what’s a pretentious word for pretentious.” I was astonished that Google returned no results that were exact matches! Am I the first person in the history of the internet to wonder this, and phrase it as such?
So, as a service to anyone else who wonders this in the future (and who is too poetic to simply type “pretentious synonyms”), I am composing this post to inform you that I cannot find a satisfyingly pretentious enough word for pretentious.
Synonyms such as pompous, ostentatious, and conceited are just too sensible, too common.
There are the words grandiloquent and magniloquent, but they only pertain to pretentious writing.
There is vainglorious, a word to which I have already composed a love letter, but to me, it is not a precise equivalent in usage. A celebrity is vainglorious, whereas an academic is pretentious. A rich person with 8 houses is vainglorious, whereas a social climber is pretentious.
Turgid is a potential contender, but could be construed as an indecent observation and provoke alarm.
Bombastic doesn’t work for me, because it was a Shaggy song, and I believe Shaggy thought it was cool to be bombastic. “What you want is some boombastic romantic fantastic lover / She call me Mr. Boombastic, say me fantastic…”
To sum: I’m left with no eloquent way to pretentiously express myself about how pretentious something else is.
