Forms: 6 bom-, bumbaste, 6–8 bumbast, 6– bombast. [A variant of BOMBACE, bombase (F. bombace), in 16th c. pronounced (bomba·s), the t being either simply phonetic (the converse of bass, bast) or perhaps influenced by the pa. pple. bombast of BOMBASE v. Originally accented on second syllable, as still in Byron: but already in Shakespeare on the first. Most dictionaries make the first syllable bvm-, but contemporary usage favors bǫm-.]
† 1. The soft down of the cotton-plant; raw cotton; cotton-wool. Obs.
1568. T. Howell, Arb. Amitie (1879), 61. From all meate soft, as wooll and flaxe, bombaste and winds that bloe.
1582. Hester, Secr. Phiorav., II. xx. 99. Wet a little Bumbast in our Caustick.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, II. cccxxxv. 901. Called in English & French, Cotton, Bombaste & Bombace.
1615. G. Sandys, Trav., 15. The head [of the Cotton plant] … ripening breakes, and is deliuered of a white soft Bombast.
1665. G. Havers, P. della Valle’s Trav., 23. Which linnen … is altogether of Bumbast or Cotton, (there being no Flax in India).
† b. attrib. Cotton. Obs.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 222. Scarlet, or white Bumbast cloth.
1600. Dekker, Gentle Craft, 15. You bombast cotten-candle queane.
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, III. xli. (1737), III. 139. The bumbast and cotton bushes.
† 2. Cotton-wool used as padding or stuffing for clothes, etc. Obs. exc. Hist.
1572. Gascoigne, B. Withipoll. To stuff thy doublet full of such bumbaste.
1601. R. Johnson, Kingd. & Commw., 140. Iacks quilted with bombast to resist arrowes.
1685. Crowne, Sir C. Nice, II. 18. For the inside; do you like much bombast, madam?
1849. Mem. Kirkaldy of Gr., viii. 77. Their large … trunk-hose, being quilted and stuffed with bombast.
† b. fig. Padding, stuffing; stopping of the ears.
1575. Gascoigne, Wks. (1587), 83. It hath no bumbast now, but skin and bones.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. ii. 791. As bumbast and as lining to the time.
1631. [Mabbe], Celestina, X. 120. Frame … for your eares the bumbast, or stuffing of sufferance and bearing.
3. fig. Inflated or turgid language; high-sounding language on a trivial or commonplace subject; ‘fustian’; ‘tall talk.’ [This sense has been erroneously supposed to have originated in the name of Paracelsus (P. A. T. Bombast von Hohenheim).]
1589. Nashe, in Greene, Menaphon (Arb.), Ded. 6. To out-brave better pens with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blanke verse.
a. 1625. Fletcher, Chances, V. iii. I like his words well; there’s no bombast in ’em.
1710. Pope, Lett., Wks. 1736, V. 107. The ambition of surprising a reader, is the true natural cause of all fustian, or bombast in poetry.
1762. Kames, Elem. Crit., iv. (1833), 124. False sublime known by the name of bombast.
1811. Byron, Hints from Hor., 44. Another soars, inflated with bombast.
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xxxiii. (1879), 342. Their eloquence is all bombast.
b. transf.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 221. What might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal.
1821. Craig, Lect. Drawing, iv. 213. I have insuperable objections to this sort of bombast in painting.
