noun
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vain or ostentatious display of dignity or importance
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the quality of being pompous
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ostentatiously lofty style, language, etc
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a pompous action, remark, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pomposity
1400–50; late Middle English pomposite < Late Latin pompōsitās. See pompous, -ity
Explanation
The noun pomposity means super-sized self-confidence. A person who thinks he or she is better than every else suffers from pomposity — and everyone in that person's life suffers, too. Pomposity, pronounced "pahm-POSS-ih-tee," isn't just for arrogant people. Things can have this unpleasant quality, too. For example, the pomposity of an award ceremony that presents the winners and judges as the most important people who ever lived will leave viewers cold. Language can also be a victim of pomposity — when someone says, "We dined at our beloved little bistro," another person would say, "We ate at our favorite neighborhood joint."
Vocabulary lists containing pomposity
Oliver Twist
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Absalom, Absalom!
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Mr. James, making his Tanglewood and BSO debuts, lent his all-important part tangible seriousness without pomposity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
At this point the reader may wonder why I should even bother to rebuke George Will; in his outmoded pomposity, he makes almost too easy a target.
From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2025
I love the Oscars, with all their pageantry and pomposity.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2024
"Barry Humphries, through his creations, poked and prodded us, exposed pretensions, punctured pomposity, surfaced insecurities, but most of all, made us laugh at ourselves," he wrote.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2023
Read English news, yes, and English sport, politics and pomposity, but in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone.
From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
Rebellious colonists skewered British taxation policies, military blunders and parliamentary pomposities through plays, songs and cartoons that rallied others to the cause of independence and made mass mobilization fun.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2025
“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” with or without the British “u,” is a very youthful, disjointed text, its thin thread of plot repeatedly cut by clowns, dullards, puns, pomposities and noodling that goes nowhere.
From New York Times ● Jul. 27, 2023
From time to time, Mr. Leo devoted his column to skewering the conventions and pomposities of journalistic prose.
From Washington Post ● May 13, 2022
In the Persia of the time, you couldn’t speak or write about the Shah openly, so he called him Marjoribanks, a silly name to make fun of pomposities.
From Salon ● Feb. 4, 2013
Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris, and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose and inflated pomposities of the age.
From The Story of Paris by Kimball, Katherine
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
