[‘ /intr./ To talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.']
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈbləʊvɪeɪt/, U.S. /ˈbloʊviˌeɪt/
Etymology:Probably < blow v.1 + -viate (in e.g. deviate v., abbreviate v., etc.); compare -ate suffix3.
/U.S./
/intr./ To talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.
1845 /Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio)/ 14 Oct. 3/1 Peter P. Low, Esq., will with open throat..bloviate about the farmers being taxed upon the full value of their farms, while bankers are released from taxation.
1887 /Amer. Missionary/ Sept. 258 And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically?
1923 /N.Y. Times/ 23 Aug. 14/4 We all like to bloviate against ‘corporations’, and there is no tenderness in New Jersey for the Public Service Railway Company.
1957 /Amer. Hist. Rev./ *62* 1014 Occasionally a candidate makes some great pronouncement or drastic shift of position in such an oration, but more often he merely talks, or, as Harding put it, ‘bloviates’, being concerned more with the political effect of his remarks than with their meaning.
2002 /Mother Jones/ May–June 82/2 Chávez seems enamored of the sound of his own voice, and he has an unpopular habit of taking over Venezuela’s TV and radio stations to bloviate about his reforms.